THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


STORIES  OP 
INYENTORS  AID  DISCOVERERS 

IN 

SCIENCE  AND  THE  USEFUL  ARTS. 
A  BOOK  FOR  OLD  AND  YOUNG. 

BY    JOHN    TIMES,    F.S.A. 
tJOitl)  Illustrations. 


The  First  Practical  Steam-boat. 


'Justice  exacts  that  those  by  whom  we  are  most  benefited  should  be  most 
honored." — DB.  JOHNSON'S  Rambler. 


NEW    YORK: 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS,    PUBLISHERS, 

FBANKLIN    SQUARE. 

I860. 


^  / 


TO  THE  READER. 


SIR  HUMPHREY  DAVY,  in  his  last  work  of  charming 
philosophy,  remarks :  "  The  beginning  of  civilization  is 
the  discovery  of  some  useful  arts,  by  which  men  acquire 
property,  comforts,  or  luxuries.  The  necessity  or  desire 
of  preserving  them  leads  to  laws  and  social  institutions,, 
The  discovery  of  peculiar  arts  gives  superiority  to  par- 
ticular nations ;  and  the  love  of  power  induces  them  to 
employ  this  superiority  to  subjugate  other  nations,  who 
learn  their  arts,  and  ultimately  adopt  their  manners ;  so 
that,  in  reality,  the  origin  as  well  as  the  progress  and  im- 
provement of  civil  society  is  founded  in  mechanical  and 
chemical  inventions"*  This  remark  was  made  thirty 
years  ago ;  and  the  foresight  of  the  author  is  proved  by 
his  words  having  since  become  still  stronger  evidence  of 
his  position  than  at  the  time  they  were  written.  You 
will  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  to  find  the  majority  of 
these  "  Stories  of  Inventors  and  Discoverers"  selected 
from  the  recorded  triumphs  of  Mechanics  and  Chemistry. 

Although  the  Sixty  Narratives  which  are  the  staple 
of  the  present  volume  range  through  ages — from  Ar- 
chimedes to  Isambard  Kingdom  Brunei — they,  for  the 
most  part,  consist  of  modern  instances.  The  earlier  rec- 
ords have,  however,  proved  rich  in  what  may  be  termed 
the  Curiosities  of  Invention,  among  which  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  find  many  a  germ  of  later  success.  In  many 
cases,  too,  the  moderns  have  repaid  what  they  owed  to 

*  Consolations  in  Travel;  or,  the  Last  Dags  of  a  Philosopher.  By 
Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  Bart. 


M3588Q8 


VU1  TO    THE    READER. 

their  predecessors  by  throwing  new  light  upon  some  of 
the  boasted  wonders  of  ancient  ingenuity ;  and  this 
mode  of  illustration  has  been  specially  attended  to  in  the 
present  work.  In  each  instance  also  it  has  been  sought, 
as  far  as  practicable,  to  bring  the  narrative  down  to  the 
science  of  our  own  time. 

The  antiquities  of  such  subjects  are  curious,  and  in- 
teresting to  a  large  class  of  readers :  as  in  the  cases  of 
Printing  and  Gunpowder;  the  Art  of  Navigating  the 
Air  and  Living  under  Water ;  the  marvels  of  Automata.; 
and  a  host  of  "  Secret  Inventions"  besides  those  of  John, 
Napier. 

Occasionally  it  has  been  but  justice  to  set  in  their 
proper  light  the  merits  of  old  workers — as  in  "  The  True 
History  of  Friar  Bacon,"  who  was  a  reformer  gf  science 
centuries  before  his  more  illustrious  namesake,  Francis 
Lord  Bacon.  In  the  "  Story  of  Paracelsus,"  too,  a 
proper  estimate  is  attempted  of  his  discoveries,  which 
have  been,  in  some  instances,  obscured  by  his  quackery. 

To  the  next  group  of  Inventors — of  the  times  of  the 
Civil  War  and  the  Restoration — a  sort  of  romantic  in- 
terest attaches ;  whether  in  the  philosophical  pursuits  of 
Prince  Rupert  beside  his  forge  in  the  keep  of  Windsor 
Castle,  or  in  importing  "  Rupert's  Drops ;"  in  the  recre- 
ations of  Sir  Samuel  Morland,  "  Master  of  Mechanics"  to 
Charles  II.,  or  in  the  Century  of  Inventions  by  the  Mar- 
quis of  Worcester,  who  by  this  rational  means  beguiled 
the  captivity  in  the  Tower  of  London  to  which  his  loy- 
alty had  consigned  him.  His  "  Water-commanding  En- 
gine" is  believed  to  have  been  one  of  the  results  of  that 
period. 

In  "  the  separate,  simultaneous,  and  yet  mutually  de- 
pendent progress  of  industry"  in  the  latter  half  of  last 
century,  several  instances  have  been  gathered,  at  the 


TO   THE    READER.  IX 

head  of  which  is  that  of  "  Watt,  who,  poor  in  worldly 
wealth,  but  possessed  of  mental  riches  vouchsafed  to 
few,  was  then  wishing  to  realize  an  idea  destined  to  ef- 
fect more  surprising  results  in  the  history  of  Britain  than 
the  wars,  alliances,  and  legislation  of  centuries."*  Then, 
what  a  series  of  sufferings  and  conflicts  with  jealousy 
and  ignorance  can  be  traced  in  the  progress  of  the  Cotton 
Manufacture,  consummated  by  Watt's  great  invention ! 

To  a  somewhat  earlier  period  belong  the  perils  of 
John  Lombe  in  his  furtive  journey  to  Piedmont,  to  bring 
over  Silk-throwing  machinery ;  and  the  story  of  Lee's 
invention  of  the  Stocking-frame,  traceable  to  the  tender- 
est  feeling  of  man — his  sympathy  for  "the  sole  part  of 
all  his  joys." 

In  another  group  of  narratives  we  see  how  brilliant 
was  the  success  of  Davy's  Safety-Lamp,  and  how  miser- 
able the  fate  of  poor  Carcel ;  and  how  hard  was  the  bat- 
tle which  the  projectors  of  Gas-lighting  had  to  fight 
with  Parliament-men  and  men  of  science  ere  the  new 
light  broke  forth  upon  the  world. 

Next  we  have  the  Era  of  Engineering,  in  which  our 
country  was  improved  by  Canals,  Light-houses,  and  Har- 
bors, Bridges,  Breakwaters,  and  Docks  —  by  Brindley, 
Smeaton,  Telford,  and  Rennie,  whose  fortunes,  as  here 
narrated,  are  so  many  cheering  lessons  to  striving  genius. 

The  Steam-boat  yields  a  long  and  interesting  chapter 
— from  the  records  of  nearly  four  centuries  since  to  the 
fate  of  Symington,  whose  invention  led  to  the  earlier  ac- 
complishment of  Steam  Navigation  in  another  country. 

The  Railway  proved,  however,  a  more  secure  success 
through  the  genius  of  George  Stephenson,  "  once  a  lo- 
comotive stoker  in  the  north  of  England,  and  afterward 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  engineers  of  modern  times," 
*  James  Sime,  M.A. 


X  TO   THE   READER. 

succeeded  by  his  not  less  distinguished  son,  Robert  Ste- 
phenson,  whose  genius  matured  the  system  which  his  fa- 
ther had  originated.  To  this  group  also  belong  the 
Brunels,  father  and  son,  the  latter  famed  for  his  Railway 
Works  and  Iron  Ship-building. 

The  arch-chemic  art  of  Photography,  aided  by  the 
science  of  the  Stereoscope,  forms  the  next  chapter ;  and 
the  work  concludes  with  an  account  of  the  Electric  Tel- 
egraph, its  anticipation  and  consummation,  which  is 
crowded  with  incident. 

Throughout  the  following  pages  acknowledgment  is 
made  of  the  respective  authorities  for  the  facts  and  state- 
ments in  the  several  narratives,  the  choice  of  which  has 
been  dictated  by  impartiality  and  anxiety  to  be  just. 

In  tracing  the  fortunes  of  Inventors  and  Discoverers, 
it  is  painful  to  note  how  many  have  become  "  Martyrs 
of  Science ;"  a  phrase  sometimes  misapplied,  and  which, 
there  is  reason  to  hope,  will  at  no  very  distant  time  be 
inapplicable.  A  brighter  era  is  at  hand.  "  Thirty  years 
ago  there  was  not  a  single  literary  or  scientific  man  who 
enjoyed  a  pension  from  the  crown,  or  (with  one  excep- 
tion) was  distinguished  by  any  mark  of  honor  from  the 
sovereign.  This  is  happily  no  longer  the  case ;  for  since 
1830  there  have  been  conferred  for  intellectual  services 
thirty  titles  of  honor,  and  we  now  find  on  the  Civil  List 
the  names  of  nearly  fifty  distinguished  persons.  These 
liberal  reforms  naturally  led  to  others ;  institutions  as 
well  as  individuals  now  share  in  the  generosity  of  the 
state  :"*  and  that  scientific  men  may  long  continue  to 
receive  such  honors  from  a  country  which  so  largely 
owes  its  pre-eminence  to  the  applied  sciences,  is  the 
fervent  hope  of  THE  AUTHOR. 

*  Address  of  Sir  David  Brewster,  Principal  of  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, 1859. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

THE  INVENTIONS  or  ARCHIMEDES 15 

THE  MAGNET  AND  THE  MARINER'S  COMPASS 21 

WHO  INVENTED  PRINTING,  AND  WHERE? 29 

WHO  INVENTED  GUNPOWDER  ? 43 

THE  BAROMETER:  TORRICELLI  AND  PASCAL 50 

THE  AIR-PUMP  AND  THE  AIR-GUN 55 

LIVING  UNDERWATER:  THE  DIVING-BELL, 59 

AUTOMATA  AND  SPEAKING  MACHINES 72 

THE  AUTOMATON  CHESS-PLAYER 86 

NAVIGATION  OF  THE  AIR:  ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  BALLOON...     95 

THE  TRUE  HISTORY  OF  FRIAR  BACON i 121 

THE  DISCOVERIES  OF  LEONARDO  DA  VINCI 127 

THE  STORY  OF  PARACELSUS 132 

NAPIER'S  SECRET  INVENTIONS 136 

LORD  BACON'S  "NEW  PHILOSOPHY" 141 

INVENTIONS  OF  PRINCE  RUPERT 146 

"PRINCE  RUPERT'S  DROPS" 152 

SIR  SAMUEL  MORLAND  AND  HIS  INVENTIONS 156 

THE  MARQUIS  OF  WORCESTER'S  "CENTURY  OF  INVENTIONS"...  161 

GEORGE  GRAHAM  AND  HIS  IMPROVEMENT  OF  THE  WATCH 170 

JOHN  HARRISON  AND  THE  LONGITUDE  WATCH 175 

DR.  WILLIAM  HARVEY  AND  THE  CIRCULATION  OF  THE  BLOOD..  180 

DR.  JENNER  AND  HIS  DISCOVERY  OF  VACCINATION 188 

EULER'S  POWERS  OF  CALCULATION 195 

MR.  GEORGE  BIDDER  AND  MENTAL  CALCULATION 198 

CALCULATING  MACHINES 204 

"THE  STARRY  GALILEO:"  INVENTION  OF  THE  TELESCOPE 212 

ISAAC  NEWTON  MAKES  THE  FIRST  REFLECTING  TELESCOPE 219 

GUINAND'S  GLASS  FOR  ACHROMATIC  TELESCOPES 225 

SIR  WILLIAM  HERSCHEL  AND  HIS  TELESCOPES 230 

THE  EARL  OF  ROSSE'S  REFLECTING  TELESCOPES 239 

THE  INVENTION  OF  THE  MICROSCOPE ..  246 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER'S  KALEIDOSCOPE 250 

MAGIC  MIRRORS  AND  BURNING  LENSES 253 

DISCOVERY  OF  THE  PLANET  NEPTUNE 256 

PALISSY  THE  POTTER 260 

JOSIAH  WEDGWOOD  AND  HIS  WARES 268 

JAMES  WATT  AND  THE  STEAM-ENGINE 273 

THE  COTTON  MANUFACTURE  : 

HARGREAVES  AND  THE  SPINNING  JENNY  ;  ARKWRIGHT  AND 

THE  SPINNING  FRAME 296 

SAMUEL  CROMPTON  AND  THE  SPINNING  MULE 302 

DR.  CARTWRIGHT  AND  THE  POWER-LOOM 311 

CALICO-PRINTING  AND  THE  KISE  OF  THE  PEELS 313 

COTTON-SPINNING  MACHINERY 316 

JOHN  LOMBE  AND  THE  FIRST  SILK-THROWING  MILL  IN  ENGLAND  319 

Silk  Culture  in  England 324 

WILLIAM  LEE  AND  THE  STOCKING-FRAME 328 

JACQUARD  AND  HIS  LOOM 332 

DR.  FRANKLIN  PROVES  THE  IDENTITY  OF  LIGHTNING  AND  ELEC- 
TRICITY   336 

CHEMISTRY  OF  THE  GASES  :  DISCOVERY  OF  CHOKE-DAMP  AND 

FIRE-DAMP 340 

SIR  HUMPHREY  DAVY  AND  THE  SAFETY-LAMP 343 

CARCEL  AND  HIS  LAMP 352 

GAS-LIGHTING 354 

JAMES  BRINDLEY  AND  CANAL  NAVIGATION 361 

JOHN  SMEATON:  LIGHT-HOUSES  AND  HARBORS 365 

INVENTIONS  OF  JOSEPH  BRAMAH 370 

THOMAS  TELFORD  AND  THE  MENAI  SUSPENSION  BRIDGE ;.  373 

JOHN  RENNIE:  DOCKS  AND  BRIDGES 378 

"THE  FIRST  PRACTICAL  STEAM-BOAT" 382 

SIR   ISAMBARD   M.  BRUNEL  :    BLOCK   MACHINERY   AND   THE 

THAMES  TUNNEL 396 

GEORGE  STEPHENSON,  THE  KAILWAY  ENGINEER 402 

EGBERT  STEPHENSON  AND  RAILWAY  WORKS 414 

ISAMBARD  K.  BRUNEL  :    RAILWAY  WORKS   AND   IRON  SHIP- 
BUILDING...-   426 

PHOTOGRAPHY  AND  THE  STEREOSCOPE 432 

CAOUTCHOUC  AND  ITS  MANUFACTURES 447 

GUTTA  PERCHA  AND  ITS  MANUFACTURES 452 

THE  ELECTRIC  TELEGRAPH ..  456 


LIST  OF  ENGRAVINGS, 


PAGE 

The  Portion  of  Mr.  Babbage's  Difference  Engine  in  the  Museum 

of  King's  College,  London Frontispiece. 

The  first  practical  Steam-boat Vignette. 

Franklin  at  his  Case 29 

Type  of  a  Letter— Types  setup 31 

Casting  the  Type 34 

An  Adams  Power-press 37 

The  Hand  Press 40 

The  Roller 41 

The  Composing-stick 42 

Jacob  Degen's  Flying  Machine 94 

M.  Laurent's  Bird  Machine 97 

The  first  Montgolfier 101 

De  Rozier's  Balloon 102 

The  first  Ascension  on  Horseback 105 

Testu-Brissy's  Balloon 108 

The  French  Academy's  Balloon 109 

Blanchard's  Flying  Machine 114 

Cooking's  Parachute  Misfortune 114 

Petin's  projected  Grand  Flying  Machine .  118 

Besnier's  Flying  Machine 120 

Portrait  of  Roger  Bacon 121 

"Bacon's  Folly,"  Oxford 126 

Portrait  of  John  Napier,  of  Merchiston 136 

Prince  Rupert,  in  his  Laboratory  in  Windsor  Castle,  visited  by 

Charles  II.     Drawn  by  John  Gilbert 149 

Portrait  of  Edward,  Marquis  of  Worcester ". 161 

Statue  of  Dr.  Jenner  in  Trafalgar  Square 194 

Newton's  first  Reflecting  Telescope 221 

Statue  of  Newton  at  Grantham 223 

Lord  Rosse's  great  Reflecting  Telescope  at  Parsonstown 245 

Portrait  of  Palissy  the  Potter 263 


XIV  LIST   OF   ENGRAVINGS. 

PAGE 

Wedgwood's  first  Pottery 263 

Arkwright's  Mills,  from  Cromford  Heights 301 

Portrait  of  Samuel  Crompton,  Inventor  of  the  Spinning  Mule ....  304 

The  Hall-in-the-Wood,  near  Bolton 304 

Lombe's  Silk-throwing  Mill  at  Derby 325 

Chest  in  which  Lombe  brought  his  Silk  machinery  from  Pied- 
mont   325 

SirH.  Davy's  Model  Safety-lamp 347 

F .  A .  Winsor,  Projector  of  Street  Gas-lighting 358 

The  Thames  Tunnel  Shield 401 

Cottage  at  Wylam  in  which  George  Stephenson  was  born 403 

The  Rocket  Prize  Locomotive 411 

Portraits  of  George  Stephenson  and  Robert  Stephenson,  M.P....  415 

Portraits  of  Sir  I.  M.Brunei  and  I.  K.  Brunei 415 

Ficus  Elastica — Sipponia  Elastica 446 

Animals  and  Plants  from  the  Atlantic  Telegraph  Plateau 465 


ME.  BABBAGE'S  DIFFERENCE  ENGINE. 

THE  Frontispiece  represents  the  face  of  that  small  portion  of  Mr. 
Babbage's  Difference  Engine  which  is  now  standing  in  the  Museum 
of  King's  College. 

In  correction  of  the  closing  sentence  of  the  last  paragraph  in  page 
207,  it  should  be  stated  that  the  portion  of  the  engine  in  King's  Col- 
lege is  in  order,  and  is  capable  of  calculating  to  five  figures,  and  two 
orders  of  differences,  at  the  rate  of  12  or  14  arguments  and  corre- 
sponding tabular  numbers  per  minute;  and  neither  the  number  of 
orders  of  differences,  nor  the  number  of  digits,  would  make  any  dif- 
ference in  its  rate  of  work. 

Without  numerous  carefully  lettered  and  figured  mechanical  draw- 
ings, it  would  be  impossible  properly  to  describe  the  elaborate  mech- 
anism of  this  engine ;  it  has,  indeed,  been  found  impossible  for  ono 
competent  mechanic,  who  has  fully  mastered  eveiy  portion,  to  explain 
the  machine  itself  to  another  equally  competent  mechanic  without  the 
devotion  of  considerable  time. 

There  is  a  very  commonly  entertained,  and  certainly  a  very  natural 
notion  that  Mr.' Babbage's  "Analytical  Engine"  (see  page  207)  is  an 
improvement  (-we  were  going  to  say  a  mere  improvement)  on  his 
"Difference  Engine." 

This  is  altogether  a  mistake,  there  being  scarcely  less  connection 
between  a  clock  and  a  steam-engine :  the  two  entirely  different  en- 
gines of  Mr.  Babbage  merely  follow  one  another  in  order  of  time, 
though,  of  course,  the  mechanical  experience  he  acquired  during  the 
progress  of  the  one  must  have  been  of  the  greatest  assistance  while 
contriving  the  separate  portions  of  the  other. 


STORIES 


OP 


INVENTORS  AND  DISCOVERERS. 


THE  INVENTIONS  OF  AKCHIMEDES. 

IT  is  scarcely  possible  to  view  the  vast  steam-ships  of 
our  day  without  reflecting  that  to  a  great  master  of  Me- 
chanics, upward  of  2000  years  since,  we  in  part  owe  the 
invention  of  the  machine  by  which  these  mighty  vessels 
are  propelled  upon  the  wide  world  of  waters.  This  pow- 
er is  an  application  of  "  the  Screw  of  Archimedes,"  the 
most  celebrated  of  the  Greek  geometricians.  He  was 
born  in  Sicily,  in  the  Corinthian  colony  of  Syracuse,  in 
the  year  287  B.C.,  and,  when  a  very  young  man,  was  for- 
tunate enough  to  enjoy  the  patronage  of  his  relative,  Hi- 
ero,  the  reigning  Prince  of  Syracuse. 

The  ancients  attribute  to  Archimedes  more  than  forty 
mechanical  inventions,  among  which  are"  the  endless 
screw ;  the  combination  of  pulleys ;  an  hydraulic  organ, 
according  to  Tertullian ;  a  machine  called  the  helix,  or 
screw,  for  launching  ships ;  and  a  machine  called  loculus, 
which  appears  to  have  consisted  of  forty  pieces,  by  the 
putting  together  of  which  various  objects  could  be 
framed,  and  which  was  used  by  boys  as  a  sort  of  arti- 
ficial memory. 

Archimedes  is  said  to  have  obtained  the  friendship 
and  confidence  of  Hiero  by  the  following  incident.  The 
king  had  delivered  a  certain  weight  of  gold  to  a  work- 
man to  be  made  into  a  crown.  When  the  crown  was 
made  and  sent  to  the  king,  a  suspicion  arose  in  the  royal 
mind  that  the  gold  had  been  adulterated  by  the  alloy  of 
a  baser  metal,  and  he  applied  to  Archimedes  for  his  as- 
sistance in  detecting  the  imposture :  the  difficulty  was 


16 

to  measure  the  bulk  of  the  crown  without  melting  it  into 
a  regular  figure ;  for  silver  being,  weight  for  weight,  of 
greater  bulk  than  gold,  any  alloy  of  the  former  in  place 
of  an  equal  weight  of  the  latter  would  necessarily  in- 
crease the  bulk  of  the  crown ;  and  at  that  time  there  was 
no  known  means  of  testing  the  purity  of  metal.  Archi- 
medes, after  many  unsuccessful  attempts,  was  about  to 
abandon  the  object  altogether,  when  the  following  cir- 
cumstance suggested  to  his  discerning  and  prepared  mind 
a  train  of  thought  which  led  to  the  solution  of  the  dif- 
ficulty. Stepping  into  his  bath  one  day,  as  was  his  cus- 
tom, his  mind  doubtless  fixed  on  the  object  of  his  re- 
search, he  chanced  to  observe  that,  the  bath  being  full, 
a  quantity  of  water  of  the  same  bulk  as  his  body  must 
flow  over  before  he  could  immerse  himself.  He  proba- 
bly perceived  that  any  other  body  of  the  same  bulk 
would  have  raised  the  water  equally ;  but  that  another 
body  of  the  same  weight,  but  less  bulky,  would  not  have 
produced  so  great  an  effect.  In  the  words  of  Vitruvius, 
"  as  soon  as  he  had  hit  upon  this  method  of  detection,  he 
did  not  wait  a  moment,  but  jumped  joyfully  out  of  the 
bath,  and  running  forthwith  toward  his  own  house,  call- 
ed out  with  a  loud  voice  that  he  had  found  what  he 
sought.  For  as  he  ran,  he  called  out,  in  Greek,  Eureka ! 
Eureka !  ' 1  have  found  it  out !  I  have  found  it  out !'  " 
When  his  emotion  had  sobered  down,  he  proceeded  to 
investigate  the  subject  calmly.  He  procured  two  mass- 
es of  metal,  each  of  equal  weight  with  the  crown — one 
of  gold,  and  the  other  of  silver ;  and  having  filled  a  ves- 
sel very  accurately  with  water,  he  plunged  into  it  the 
silver,  and  marked  the  exact  quantity  of  water  that  over- 
flowed. He  then  treated  the  gold  in  the  same  manner, 
and  observed  that  a  less  quantity  of  water  overflowed 
than  before.  He  next  plunged  the  crown  into  the  same 
vessel  full  of  water,  and  observed  that  it  displaced  more 
of  the  fluid  than  the  gold  had  done,  and  less  than  the 
silver ;  by  which  he  inferred  that  the  crown  was  neither 
pure  gold  nor  pure  silver,  but  a  mixture  of  both.  Hiero 
was  so  gratified  with  this  result  as  to  declare  that  from 
that  moment  he  could  never  refuse  to  believe  any  thing 
Archimedes  told  him.* 

*  Galileo,  while  studying  the  hydrostatical  treatise  of  Archimedes, 


THE    SCREW    OF    ARCHIMEDES.  17 

Traveling  into  Egypt,  and  observing  the  necessity  of 
raising  the  water  of  the  Nile  to  points  which  the  river 
did  not  reach,  as  well  as  the  difficulty  of  clearing  the 
land  from  the  periodical  overflowings  of  the  Nile,  Archi- 
medes invented  for  this  purpose  the  Screw  which  bears 
his  name.  It  was  likewise  used  as  a  pump  to  clear  water 
from  the  holds  of  vessels ;  and  the  name  of  Archimedes 
was  held  in  great  veneration  by  seamen  on  this  account. 
The  screw  may  be  briefly  described  as  a  long  spiral  with 
its  lower  extremity  immersed  in  the  water,  which,  rising 
along  the  channels  by  the  revolution  of  the  machine  on 
its  axis,  is  discharged  at  the  upper  extremity.  When  ap- 
plied to  the  propulsion  of  steam  vessels,  the  screw  is  hor- 
izontal ;  and,  being  put  in  motion  by  a  steam-engine, 
drives  the  water  backward,  when  its  reaction,  or  return, 
propels  the  vessel. 

The  mechanical  ingenuity  of  Archimedes  was  next 
displayed  in  the  various  machines  which  he  constructed 
for  the  defense  of  Syracuse  during  a  three  years'  siege 
by  the  Romans.  Among  these  inventions  were  cata- 
pults for  throwing  arrows,  and  balista?  for  throwing 
masses  of  stone ;  and  iron  hands  or  hooks  attached  to 
chains,  thrown  to  catch  the  prows  of  the  enemy's  ves- 
sels, and  then  overturn  them.  He  is  likewise  stated  to 
have^  set  their  vessels  on  fire  by  burning-glasses :  this, 
however,  rests  upon  modern  authority,  and  Archimedes  is 
rather  believed  to  have  set  the  ships  on  fire  by  machines 
for  throwing  lighted  materials. 

After  the  storming  of  Syracuse,  Archimedes  was  killed 
by  a  Roman  soldier,  who  did  not  know  who  he  was.  The 
soldier  inquired  ;  but  the  philosopher,  being  intent  upon 
a  problem,  begged  that  his  diagram  might  not  be  dis- 
turbed; upon  which  the  soldier  put  him  to  death.  At 
his  own  request,  expressed  during  his  life,  a  sphere  in- 

wrote  his  Essay  on  the  Hydrostatic  Balance,  in  which  he  describes 
the  construction  of  the  instrument,  and  the  method  by  which  Archi- 
medes detected  the  fraud  committed  by  the  jeweler  in  the  composition 
of  Hiero's  crown.  This  work  gained  for  its  author  the  esteem  of 
Guido  Ubaldi,  who  had  distinguished  himself  by  his  mechanical  and 
mathematical  acquirements,  and  who  engaged  his  young  friend  to  in- 
vestigate the  subject  of  the  centre  of  gravity  in  solid  bodies.  The 
treatise  on  this  subject,  which  Galileo  presented  to  his  patron,  proved 
the  source  of  his  future  success  in  life. 


18  THE    TOMB    OF    ARCHIMEDES. 

scribed  in  a  cylinder  was  sculptured  on  his  tomb,  in 
memory  of  his  discovery  that  the  solid  contents  of  a 
sphere  is  exactly  two  thirds  of  that  of  the  circumscribing 
cylinder ;  and  by  this  means  the  memorial  was  afterward* 
identified.  One  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  death 
of  Archimedes,  when  Cicero  was  residing  in  Sicily,  he 
paid  homage  to  his  forgotten  tomb.  "  During  my  quaes- 
torship,"  says  this  illustrious  Roman, "  I  diligently  sought 
to  discover  the  sepulchre  of  Archimedes,  which  the  Syr- 
acusans  had  totally  neglected,  and  suffered  to  be  grown 
over  with  thorns  and  briers.  Recollecting  some  verses, 
said  to  be  inscribed  on  the  tomb,  which  mentioned  that 
on  the  top  was  placed  a  sphere  with  a  cylinder,  I  looked 
round  me  upon  every  object  at  the  Agragentine  Gate, 
the  common  receptacle  of  the  dead.  At  last  I  observed 
a  little  column  which  just  rose  above  the  thorns,  upon 
which  was  placed  the  figure  of  a  sphere  and  cylinder. 
This,  said  I  to  the  Syracusan  nobles  who  were  with  me, 
this  must,  I  think,  be  what  I  am  seeking.  Several  per- 
sons were  immediately  employed  to  clear  away  the  weeds, 
and  lay  open  the  spot.  As  soon  as  a  passage  was  open- 
ed, we  drew  near,  and  found  on  the  opposite  base  the 
inscription,  with  nearly  half  the  latter  part  of  the  verses 
worn  away.  Thus  would  this  most  famous,  and  formerly 
most  learned  city  of  Greece  have  remained  a  stranger  to 
the  tomb  of  one  of  its  most  ingenious  citizens,  had  it  not 
been  discovered  by  a  man  of  Arpinum." 

To  Archimedes  is  attributed  the  apophthegm,  "Give 
me  a  lever  long  enough,  and  a  prop  strong  enough,  and 
with  my  own  weight  I  will  move  the  world."  This  arose 
from  his  knowledge  of  the  possible  effects  of  machinery ; 
but,  however  it  might  astonish  a  Greek  of  his  day,  it 
would  now  be  admitted  to  be  as  theoretically  possible  as 
it  is  practically  impossible.  Archimedes  would  have  re- 
quired to  move  with  the  velocity  of  a  cannon  ball  for 
millions  of  ages  to  alter  the  position  of  the  earth  by  the 
smallest  part  of  an  inch.  In  mathematical  truth,  how- 
ever, the  feat  is  performed  by  every  man  who  leaps  from 
the  ground ;  for  he  kicks  the  world  away  when  he  rises, 
and  attracts  it  again  when  he  falls  back.* 

*  Ozanam  has  taken  the  trouble  to  calculate  the  time  which  would 
be  required  to  move  the  earth  one  inch ;  he  makes  it  3, 653, 745, 176, 803 
centuries. 


HIEBO'S    GALLEY.  19 

Under  the  superintendence  of  Archimedes  was  also 
built  the  renowned  Galley  for  Hiero.  It  was  construct- 
ed to  half  its  height  by  300  master  workmen  and  their 
servants  in  six  months.  Hiero  then  directed  that  the 
vessel  should  be  perfected  afloat;  but  how  to  get  the 
vast  pile  into  the  water  the  builders  knew  not,  till  Ar- 
chimedes invented  his  engine  called  the  Helix,  by  which, 
with  the  assistance  of  very  few  hands,  he  drew  the  ship 
into  the  sea,  where  it  was  completed  in  six  months. 
The  ship  consumed  wood  enough  to  build  sixty  large 
galleys ;  it  had  twenty  tiers  of  bars,  and  three  decks ; 
the  middle  deck  had  on  each  side  fifteen  dining  apart- 
ments, besides  other  chambers,  luxuriously  furnished, 
and  floors  paved  with  mosaics  of  the  story  of  the  Iliad. 
On  the  upper  deck  were  gardens,  with  arbors  of  ivy  and 
vines;  and  here  was  a  temple  of  Venus,  paved  with 
agates,  and  roofed  with  Cyprus  wood:  it  was  richly 
adorned  with  pictures  and  statues,  and  furnished  with 
couches  and  drinking  vessels.  Adjoining  was  an  apart- 
ment of  box-wood,  with  a  clock  in  the  ceiling,  in  imita- 
tion of  the  great  dial  of  Syracuse ;  and  here  was  a  huge 
bath  set  with  gems  called  Tauromenites.  There  were 
also,  on  each  side  of  this  deck,  cabins  for  the  marine  sol- 
diers, and  twenty  stables  for  horses;  in  the  forecastle 
was  a  fresh-water  cistern,  which  held  253  hogsheads; 
and  near  it  was  a  large  tank  of  sea-water,  in  which  fish 
were  kept.  From  the  ship's  sides  projected  ovens, 
kitchens,  mills,  and  other  offices,  built  upon  beams,  each 
supported  by  a  carved  image  nine  feet  high.  Around 
the  deck  were  eight  wooden  towers,  from  each  of  which 
was  raised  a  breastwork  full  of  loop-holes,  whence  an 
enemy  might  be  annoyed  with  stones ;  each  tower  being 
guarded  by  four  armed  soldiers  and  two  archers.  On 
this  upper  deck  was  also  placed  the  machine  invented  by 
Archimedes  to  fling  stones  of  300  pounds  weight,  and 
darts  eighteen  feet  long,  to  the  distance  of  120  paces; 
while  each  of  the  three  masts  had  two  engines  for  throw- 
ing stones.  The  ship  was  furnished  with  four  anchors 
of  wood  and  eight  of  iron ;  and  "  the  Water-Screw"  of 
Archimedes,  already  mentioned,  was  used  instead  of  a 
pump  for  the  vast  ship,  "by  the  help  of  which  one  man 
might  easily  and  speedily  drain  out  the  water,  though  it 


20  ARCHIMEDES,    THE   HOMER    OF    GEOMETRY. 

were  very  deep."  The  whole  ship's  company  consisted 
of  an  immense  multitude,  there  being  in  the  forecastle 
alone  600  seamen.  There  were  placed  on  board  her 
60,000  bushels  of  corn,  10,000  barrels  of  salt  fish,  and 
20,000  barrels  of  flesh,  besides  the  provisions  for  her 
company.  She  was  first  called  the  Syracuse,  but  after- 
ward the  Alexandria.  The  builder  was  Archias,  the 
Corinthian  shipwright.  The  vessel  appears  to  have  been 
armed  for  war,  and  sumptuously  fitted  for  a  pleasure 
yacht,  yet  was  ultimately  used  to  carry  corn.  The  tim- 
ber for  the  mainmast,  after  being  in  vain  sought  for  in 
Italy,  was  brought  from  England.  The  dimensions  are 
not  recorded,  but  they  must  have  exceeded  those  of  any 
ship  of  the  present  day :  indeed,  Hiero,  finding  that  none 
of  the  surrounding  harbors  sufficed  to  receive  his  vast 
ship,  loaded  it  with  corn,  and  presented  the  vessel,  with 
its  cargo,  to  Ptolemy,  King  of  Egypt ;  and  on  arriving 
at  Alexandria  it  was  hauled  ashore,  and  nothing  more  is 
recorded  respecting  it.  A  most  elaborate  description  of 
this  vast  ship  has  been  preserved  to  us  by  Athena3us,  and 
translated  into  English  by  Burchett,  in  his  Naval  Trans- 
actions. 

Archimedes  has  been  styled  the  Homer  of  Geometry ; 
yet  it  must  not  be  concealed  that  he  fell  into  the  prevail- 
ing error  of  the  ancient  philosophers,  that  geometry  was 
degraded  by  being  employed  to  produce  any  thing  use- 
ful. "  It  was  with  difficulty,"  says  Lord  Macaulay,  "  that 
he  was  induced  to  stoop  from  speculation  to  practice. 
He  was  half  ashamed  of  those  inventions  which  were  the 
wonder  of  hostile  nations,  and  always  spoke  of  them 
slightingly,  as  mere  amusements,  as  trifles  in  which  a 
mathematician  might  be  suffered  to  relax  his  mind  after 
intense  application  to  the  higher  parts  of  his  science." 


THE  MAGNET  AND  THE  MARINER'S 
COMPASS. 

THE  vast  service  of  which  Magnetism  is  to  man  may 
be  said  to  have  commenced  by  supplying  him  with  that 
invaluable  instrument,  the  Mariner's  Compass.  Mr.  Hal- 
lam  characterizes  it  as  "  a  property  of  a  natural  sub- 
stance, which,  long  overlooked,  even  though  it  attracted 
observation  by  a  different  peculiarity,  has  influenced  by 
its  accidental  discovery  the  fortunes  of  mankind  more 
than  all  the  deductions  of  philosophy." 

Before  we  describe  the  discovery  of  the  Compass,  we 
shall  briefly  explain  the  source  from  which  its  power  and 
usefulness  are  derived.  The  Magnet  is  a  metallic  body, 
possessing  the  remarkable  property  of  attracting  iron 
and  some  other  metals.  It  is  said  to  have  been  found 
abundantly  at  Magnesia,  in  Lydia,  from  which  circum- 
stance its  name  may  have  been  derived.  The  term  na- 
tive magnet  is  applied  to  the  loadstone,  which  appears  to 
be  derived  from  an  Icelandic  term,  leider-stein,  signifying 
the  leading-stone,  so  designated  from  the  stony  particles 
found  connected  with  it.  India  and  Ethiopia  formerly 
furnished  great  quantities  of  this  native  magnet.  Tiger 
Island,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Canton  River,  in  China,  is  in 
great  measure  made  up  of  this  ore,  as  mariners  infer  from 
the  circumstance  of  the  needles  of  their  compasses  being 
much  affected  by  their  proximity  to  the  island.  In  the 
earliest  times  there  were  reputed  to  be  five  distinct  kinds 
of  loadstone — the  Ethiopian,  the  Magnesian,  the  Bo3otic, 
the  Alexandrian,  and  the  Natolian.  It  is  also  found 
abundantly  in  the  iron  mines  of  Sweden,  in  America,  and 
sometimes,  though  rarely,  among  the  iron  ores  of  En- 
gland. The  ancients  also  believed  the  loadstone  to  be 
of  two  species,  male  and  female.  "  We  read,"  says  Tom- 
linson,  "  of  its  being  used  in  the  Middle  Ages  medicinally 
— to  cure  sore  eyes  and  to  procure  purgation.  Even  in 
modern  times  plasters  have  been  made  from  this  ore, 


22  TRADITIONS    OF   THE   MAGNET. 

and  much  other  quackery  has  been  perpetrated  by  its 
means."* 

The  attracting  power  of  the  Magnet  was  known  at  a 
very  early  period,  as  references  are  made  to  it  by  Aris- 
totle, and  more  particularly  by  Pliny,  who  states  that  ig- 
norant persons  call  itferrum  vivum,  or  quick  iron,  a  name 
somewhat  analogous  to  our  loadstone.  The  same  author 
appears  to  have  been  acquainted  with  the  power  of  the 
magnet  to  communicate  properties  similar  to  its  own  to 
other  bodies.  The  polarity  of  the  Magnetic  Needle,  that 
is,  the  power  of  taking  a  particular  direction  when  freely 
suspended,  escaped  the  notice  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans 
of  antiquity,  but  the  Chinese  appear  to  have  been  ac- 
quainted with  it  from  a  very  early  date. 

We  are  not  surprised  to  find  so  mysterious  an  agency 
as  the  Magnet  exercises  to  have  been  referred  to  acci- 
dental origin.  The  ancient  Greeks  represent  one  Mag- 
nes,Ta  shepherd,  leading  his  flocks  to  Mount  Ida:  he 
stretched  himself  upon  the  green-sward  to  take  repose, 
and  left  his  crook,  the  upper  part  of  which  was  made  of 
iron,  leaning  against  a  large  stone.  When  he  awoke  and 
arose  to  depart,  he  found,  on  attempting  to  take  up  his 
crook,  that  the  iron  adhered  to  the  stone.  He  communi- 
cated this  fact  to  some  philosophers  of  the  time,  and  they 
called  the  stone,  after  the  name  of  the  shepherd,  Magnes, 
the  Magnet,  which  it  retains  to  the  present  day.  It  is, 
however,  denominated  among  many  nations  the  love- 
jtone,  from  its  apparent  affection  for  iron. 

A  tradition  of  very  ancient  date  still  exists  among  the 
Chinese  respecting  a  mountain  of  magnetic  oref  rising  in 
the  midst  of  the  sea,  whose  intensity  of  attraction  is  so 
great  as  to  draw  the  nails  and  iron  bands,  with  which  the 
planks  of  the  ship  are  fastened  together,  from  their  places 
with  great  force,  and  cause  the  ship  to  fall  to  pieces. 

*  It  has  been  observed  that  the  smallest  natural  magnets  generally 
possess  the  greatest  proportion  of  attractive  power.  The  magnet  worn 
by  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  in  his  ring,  weighed  only  three  grains,  yet  it  was 
able  to  take  up  746  grains,  or  nearly  250  times  its  own  weight ;  where- 
as magnets  weighing  above  two  pounds  seldom  lift  more  than  five  or 
six  times  their  own  weight. 

f  European  writers  in  general  attribute  the  history  of  magnetic 
mountains  to  the  Moors;  and  reference  to  the  supposition  may  be 
found  even  in  writers  of  the  seventeenth  century. 


MAGNETIC    CARS.  23 

This  tradition  is  very  general  throughout  Asia ;  and  the 
Chinese  historians  place  the  mountain  in  Tchang-hai,  the 
southern  sea,  between  Tunkin  and  Cochin  China.  Ptol- 
emy also,  in  a  remarkable  passage  in  his  Geography, 
places  tnis  mountain  in  the  Chinese  seas.  In  a  work  at- 
tributed to  St.  Ambrose,  there  is  an  account  of  one  of  the 
islands  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  called  Mammoles,  in  which 
the  magnet  is  found  ;  and  the  precaution  necessary  to  be 
taken  (of  building  ships  without  iron)  to  navigate  in  that 
vicinity  is  distinctly  specified.  It  should  also  be  added 
that  the  Chinese  writers  place  this  magnetic  mountain 
in  precisely  the  same  geographical  region  that  the  au- 
thor of  the  voyages  of  Sinbad  the  Sailor  does,  which  is 
to  be  regarded  as  a  confirmation  of  the  Oriental  origin 
of  a  great  number  of  tales,  half  fiction,  half  fact,  which 
are  so  universally  diffused  among  the  legendary  literature 
of  every  language  as  to  seem  indigenous  in  each  of  them. 
It  is  extremely  probable  (says  Humboldt)  that  Europe 
owes  the  knowledge  of  the  northern  and  southern  di- 
recting powers  of  the  Magnetic  Needle — the  use  of  the 
Mariner's  Compass — to  the  Arabs,  and  that  these  people 
were,  in  turn,  indebted  for  it  to  the  Chinese.  In  the 
Chinese  historical  Szuki  of  Szumathsian,  who  lived  in  the 
earlier  half  of  the  second  century  before  our  era,  we  meet 
with  an  allusion  to  the  "  magnetic  cars,"  which  the  em- 
peror had  given  more  than  900  years  earlier  to  the  em- 
bassadors  from  Tunkin  and  Cochin  China,  that  they  might 
not  miss  their  way  on  their  return  home.*  In  the  fourth 
century  of  our  era,  Chinese  ships  employed  the  magnet 
to  guide  their  course  safely  across  the  open  sea ;  and  it 
was  by  means  of  these  vessels  that  the  knowledge  of  the 
compass  was  carried  to  India,  and  from  thence  to  the 
eastern  coasts  of  Africa.  The  Arabic  designations  Zoron 
and  Aphron  (south  and  north),  which  Vincenzius  of  Beau- 
vais  gives,  in  his  Mirror  of  Nature,  to  the  two  ends  of 
the  Magnetic  Needle,  indicate,  like  many  Arabic  names 
of  stars  which  we  still  employ,  the  channel  and  the  peo- 
ple from  whom  Western  countries  received  the  elements 
of  their  knowledge.  In  Christian  Europe,  the  first  men- 

*  Maurice,  in  his  Indian  Antiquities,  describes  this  instrument  as  a 
sort  of  magnetic  index,  which  the  Chinese  called  Chimans ;  a  name  by 
which  they  at  this  day  denominate  the  Mariner's  Compass. 


24  USE  OF  THE  MARINER'S  COMPASS. 

tion  of  the  use  of  the  Magnetic  Needle  occurs  in  the  po- 
litico-satirical poem  called  La  Bible,  by  Guyot  of  Pro- 
vence, in  1190 ;  and  in  the  description  of  Palestine,  by  Ja- 
cobus of  Vitry,  Bishop  of  Ptolemais,  between  120!  and 
1215.  Dante  (in  his  Par.)  xii.,  29)  refers,  in  a  simile,  to 
the  needle  (ago)  "  which  points  to  the  star."  Navarrete 
quotes  a  remarkable  passage  in  the  Spanish  Leyes  de  las 
Partidas  of  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century :  "  The 
needle  which  guides  the  seaman  in  the  dark  night,  and 
shows  him,  both  in  good  and  in  bad  weather,  how  to  di- 
rect his  course,  is  the  intermediate  agent  (medianerd)  be- 
tween the  loadstone  (la  piedra)  and  the  north  star." 

Humboldt  considers  it  striking  that  the  use  of  the 
south  direction  of  the  Needle  should  have  been  first  ap- 
plied in  eastern  Asia,  not  to  navigation,  but  to  land  trav- 
eling. In  the  anterior  part  of  the  Magnetic  Wagon,  a 
freely-floating  needle  moved  the  arm  and  hand  of  a  small 
figure,  which  pointed  toward  the  south.  Klaproth,  whose 
researches  upon  this  curious  subject  have  been  confirm- 
ed by  Biot  and  Stanislas  Julien,  adduces  an  old  tradition, 
according  to  which  the  Magnetic  Wagon  was  already  in 
use  in  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Honngti,  presumed  to 
have  lived  2600  years  before  our  era;  but  no  allusion  to 
this  tradition  can  be  found  in  any  writers  prior  to  the 
early  Christian  ages. 

The  Magnetic  Wagon  was  used  as  late  as  the  fifteenth 
century.  Several  of  these  carriages  were  carefully  pre- 
served in  the  Chinese  imperial  palace,  and  were  employ- 
ed in  the  building  of  Buddhist  monasteries  in  fixing  the 
points  toward  which  the  main  sides  of  the  edifice  should 
be  directed. 

As  the  excessive  mobility  of  the  Chinese  Needles  float- 
ing upon  water  rendered  it  difficult  to  note  down  the  in- 
dications which  they  afforded,  another  arrangement  was 
adopted  in  their  place  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century  of 
our  era,  in  which  the  Needle,  which  was  freely  suspend- 
ed in  the  air,  was  attached  to  a  fine  cotton  or  silken 
thread,  and  by  means  of  this  more  perfect  apparatus,  the 
Chinese,  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century, 
determined  the  amount  of  the  western  variation  of  the 
needle.  From  its  use  on  land,  the  Compass  was  finally 
adapted  to  maritime  purposes.  When  it  had  become 


25 

general  throughout  the  Indian  Ocean,  along  the  shores 
of  Persia  and  Arabia,  it  was  introduced  into  the  West, 
in  the  twelfth  century,  either  directly  through  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Arabs,  or  through  the  agency  of  the  Cru- 
saders, who,  since  1096,  had  been  brought  into  contact 
with  Egypt  and  the  true  Oriental  regions.  The  most 
essential  share  in  its  use  seems  to  have  belonged  to  the 
Moorish  pilots,  the  Genoese,  Venetians,  Majorcans,  and 
Catalans.  The  old  story,  that  Marco  Polo  first  brought 
the  Compass  into  Europe,  has  long  been  disproved :  as 
he  traveled  from  1271  to  1295,  it  is  evident,  from  the 
testimony  we  have  quoted,  that  the  Compass  was,  at  all 
events,  used  in  European  seas  from  sixty  to  seventy  years 
before  Marco  Polo  set  forth  on  his  journeyings. 

Dr.  Gilbert,  who  was  physician  in  ordinary  to  Queen 
Elizabeth,  states  that  P.  Venutus  brought  a  Compass 
from  China  in  1260.  Gilbert  bestowed  much  attention 
upon  magnetism,  and  to  some  extent  inculcated  the  doc- 
trine of  gravitation,  by  comparing  the  earth  to  a  great 
magnet.  The  term  "  poles  of  a  magnet"  arose  from  his 
theory,  which  is  remarkably  consonant  with  the  notions 
of  the  present  day. 

The  discovery  of  the  Compass  was  long  ascribed  to 
Flavio  Gioja,  of  Positano,  in  1302,  not  far  from  the  love- 
ly town  of  Amalfi,  on  the  coast  of  Calabria,  and  which 
town  was  rendered  so  celebrated  by  its  widely-extended 
maritime  laws.  The  Compass  was  then  a  rude  and  sim- 
ple instrument,  being  only  an  iron  needle  magnetized, 
and  stuck  in  a  bit  of  wood,  floating  in  a  vessel  of  water ; 
in  which  artificial  and  inconvenient  form  it  seems  to  have 
remained  till  about  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, when  Flavio  Gioja  made  the  great  improvement  of 
suspending  the  needle  on  a  centre,  and  inclosing  it  in  a 
box.  The  advantages  of  this  were  so  great  that  it  was 
universally  adopted,  and  the  instrument  in  its  old  and 
simple  form  laid  aside  and  forgotten;  hence  Gioja  in 
after  times  came  to  be  considered  as  the  inventor  of  the 
Mariner's  Compass,  of  which  he  was  only  the  improver. 
He  lived  in  the  reign  of  Charles  of  Anjou,  who  died  King 
of  Naples  in  1509.  It  was  in  compliment  to  this  sover- 
eign (for  Amalfi  is  in  the  dominion  of  Naples)  that  Gioja 
distinguished  the  north  point  by  a  fleur-de-lis ;  and  this 

B 


26  VARIATION   OF   THE   NEEDLE. 

was  one  of  the  circumstances  by  which,  in  France,  in 
later  days,  it  was  endeavored  to  prove  that  the  Mariner's 
Compass  was  a  French  discovery. 

Guyot  of  Provence,  the  French  poet,  who  lived  a  centu- 
ry earlier  than  Flavio  Gioja,  or,  at  the  latest,  under  St. 
Louis,  describes  the  polarity  of  the  Magnet  in  the  most 
unequivocal  language.  Evidence  of  the  earlier  use  of  the 
Compass  in  European  seas  than  at  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century  is  also  furnished  by  a  nautical  treatise 
of  Raymond  Lully,  of  Majorca,  who  was  at  once  a  phil- 
osophical systematizer  and  an  analytic  chemist,  a  skillful 
mariner  and  a  successful  propagator  of  Christianity ;  in 
1286  he  remarked  that  the  seamen  of  his  time  employed 
"instruments  of  measurement,  sea-charts,  and  the  mag- 
netic needle." 

The  application  of  the  Compass  to  the  purposes  of 
navigation,  doubtless,  speedily  led  to  the  discovery  of  the 
Variation  of  the  Needle.  It  must  have  been  known  to 
the  Chinese  as  far  back  as  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth 
century,  as  it  is  mentioned  in  a  work  published  by  a 
Chinese  philosopher,  named  Keon-tsoung-chy,  who  wrote 
about  the  year  1111  (Sir  Snow  Harris's  Rudimentary 
Magnetism).  In  the  Life  of  Columbus,  written  by  his 
son,  it  is  distinctly  assigned  to  that  celebrated  man ;  and 
though  its  amount  at  this  period  must  have  been  small 
in  France,  Spain,  etc.,  yet  it  was  doubtless  a  very  ob- 
servable quantity  in  many  of  the  regions  visited  by  Co- 
lumbus. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Columbus  noticed  the  Variation 
of  the  Needle  for  the  first  time  when  sailing  across  the 
Atlantic  Ocean  in  his  attempt  to  find  a  new  world.  It 
was  on  the  14th  of  September,  1492  ;  he  was  perhaps  200 
leagues  from  land,  and  the  variation  was  a  little  to  the 
west  at  London.  It  appears  that  Columbus  perceived, 
about  nightfall,  that  the  needle,  instead  of  pointing  to  the 
north  star,  varied  about  half  a  point,  or  between  five  and 
six  degrees,  to  the  northwest,  and  still  more  on  the  fol- 
lowing morning.  Struck  with  this  circumstance  he  ob- 
served it  attentively  for  three  days,  and  found  that  the 
variation  increased  as  he  advanced.  He  at  first  made 
no  mention  of  this  phenomenon,  knowing  how  ready  his 
people  were  to  take  alarm ;  but  it  soon  filled  with  con- 


OBSEEVATION    OF    COLUMBUS.  27 

sternation  his  pilots  and  mariners,  who  had  leisure  on  the 
wide  ocean  for  anxiety  and  curious  wonder.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  very  laws  of  nature  were  changing  as  they  ad- 
vanced, and  that  they  were  entering  another  world,  sub- 
ject to  unknown  influences.  They  apprehended  that  the 
compass  was  about  to  lose  its  mysterious  virtues :  and 
without  this  guide,  what  was  to  become  of  them  in  a  vast 
and  trackless  ocean  ?  But  Columbus  was  prepared  with 
a  theory  to  account  for  this  deviation  of  the  laws  of  nature, 
as  the  terrified  sailors  deemed  it  to  be.  The  needle  was 
not  at  fault,  he  said ;  for  it  did  not  tend  to  the  polar  star, 
but  to  some  fixed  and  unseen  point.  The  Variation, 
therefore,  was  not  caused  by  any  fallacy  in  the  Compass, 
but  by  the  movement  of  the  polar  star  itself,  which,  like 
the  other  heavenly  bodies,  had  its  changes  and  revolu- 
tions, and  every  day  described  a  circle  round  the  pole. 
The  high  opinion  that  the  pilots  entertained  of  Columbus 
as  a  profound  astronomer  gave  weight  to  his  theory,  and 
their  alarm  subsided.  As  yet  the  solar  system  of  Coper- 
nicus was  unknown ;  the  explanation  of  Columbus  was 
therefore  highly  plausible  and  ingenious,  and  it  shows, 
and  we  admire,  the  perspicacity  of  the  man  who,  with  so 
little  means,  could  trace  up  so  fearful  an  effect  to  a  cause 
founded  partly  in  truth,  and  thus  meet  the  emergency 
of  the  moment.  The  theory  may  at  first  have  been  ad- 
vanced merely  to  satisfy  the  minds  of  others,  but  Colum- 
bus appears  subsequently  to  have  been  satisfied  with  it 
himself. 

The  discovery  of  a  magnetic  line  without  variation  is 
due  to  Columbus.  In  a  letter  written  in  1498,  he  says, 
"  Each  time  that  I  sail  from  Spain  to  the  Indies  I  find, 
as  soon  as  I  arrive  a  hundred  miles  to  the  west  of  the 
Azores,  an  extraordinary  alteration  in  the  movements  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  in  the  temperature  of  the  air,  and  in 
the  character  of  the  ocean ;  I  have  observed  these  alter- 
ations with  particular  care,  and  have  recognized  that  the 
needle  of  the  Mariner's  Compass,  the  deviation  of  which 
had  been  northeast,  now  turned  to  the  northwest" 

An  eloquent  writer  thus  picturesquely  illustrates  the 
benefits  of  this  great  discovery :  "  In  the  development 
of  the  commercial  spirit  of  the  Crusades,  Providence  is 
seen  in  its  most  manifest  footsteps.  Sitting  upon  the 


28  OBSERVATION    OF    COLUMBUS. 

floods,  it  opens  to  new  enterprises.  The  Compass 
twinkling  on  its  card  was  a  beam  from  heaven;  that 
tiny  magnet  was  given  as  a  seniory  of  earth  and  sky. 
Like  a  new  revelation,  the  mysteries  of  an  unknown 
world  were  unveiled ;  like  a  new  illapse,  the  bold  and 
noble  were  inspired  to  lead  the  way.  Dias  doubles  the 
Cape  of  Storms ;  De  Gama  finds  his  course  to  the  East 
Indies ;  Columbus  treads  the  Bahamas ;  and  twelve 
years  do  not  separate  these  discoveries." 


Franklin  at  his  Case. 

WHO  INVENTED  FEINTING,  AND  WHERE? 

THE  inquirers  into  the  origin  and  history  of  this  al- 
most ubiquitous  "  noble  craft  and  mystery"  would  seem 
to  have  arrived  at  this  conclusion — that  it  is  difficult  to 
say  at  what  period  of  time  the  art  of  Printing  did  not 
exist.  The  simplest  and  most  natural  mode  of  convey- 
ing an  idea  is  by  the  reproduction  of  similar  appearances 
from  an  impression  of  the  same  surface ;  and  whether 
this  be  by  a  hand  or  foot  upon  snow,  or  by  the  pressure 
of  wood  or  metal  upon  paper  or  vellum,  it  is  alike  print- 
ing. Accordingly,  we  find  evidence  that  nearly  four 
thousand  years  since  a  rude  and  imperfect  method  of 
printing  was  certainly  practiced.  First,  seals  were  im- 
pressed upon  a  plastic  material ;  next,  symbols  or  char- 
acters were  stamped  upon  clay  in  forming  bricks  (as 
practiced  in  Babylon),  cylinders,  and  the  walls  of  edifices. 
Of  this  art,  Wilkinson  and  others  have  brought  examples 
from  Egypt ;  and  Kawlinson  and  Layard  from  the  ruins 
of  the  buried  cities  of  Asia.  Not  only  have  the  in- 
scribed bricks  been  found,  but  the  wooden  stamps  with 
which  they  were  impressed ;  of  these  numerous  speci- 
mens are  in  the  British  Museum.  Here  also  may  be 
seen  several  instruments  presenting  a  singular  instance 
how  very  nearly  we  may  approach  to  an  important  dis- 


30  PRINTING   FROM   MOVABLE   TYPES. 

covery,  and  yet  miss  it.  These  are  brass  or  bronze 
stamps,  having  on  their  faces  inscriptions  in  raised  char- 
acters reversed.  To  the  back  has  been  fastened  a  handle, 
a  loop,  a  boss,  or  a  ring.  One  use  of  these  stamps  has 
evidently  been  to  print  the  inscription  on  surfaces,  by 
aid  of  color,  upon  papyrus,  linen,  or  parchment ;  and,  as 
the  inscriptions  show  these  stamps  to  have  been  of  the 
period  when  literature  had  become  one  of  the  pursuits 
of  the  great,  and  the  copying  of  books  was  a  slow  and 
expensive  process,  it  is  strange  that  the  Romans,  by 
whom  these  signets  were  used,  should  not  have  improved 
upon  them  by  engraving  whole  sentences  and  composi- 
tions upon  blocks,  and  thence  transferring  them  to  paper. 
The  Chinese  printing  from  blocks  at  this  day  closely  re- 
sembles the  old  Roman  ;  and  they  assert  that  it  was  used 
by  them  several  centuries  before  it  was  known  in  Europe 
— in  fact,  fifty  years  before  the  Christian  era. 

A  vast  interval  elapses  between  the  above  attempts 
and  the  next  advance — engraving  pictures  upon  wooden 
blocks,  invented  toward  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century 
by  a  twin  brother  and  sister  of  the  illustrious  family  of 
Cunio,  lords  of  Italy :  these  consisted  of  nine  engravings 
of  the  "  Heroic  Actions"  of  Alexander  the  Great,  and, 
as  stated  in  the  title-page,  "  first  reduced,  imagined,  and 
attempted  to  be  executed  in  relief,  with  a  small  knife,  on 
blocks  of  wood ;"  "  all  this  was  done  and  finished  by  us 
when  only  sixteen  years  of  age."  This  title,  if  genuine, 
presents  us  at  once  with  the  origin,  execution,  and  de- 
sign of  the  first  attempts  at  block-printing.  The  next 
earliest  evidence  is  a  decree  found  among  the  archives 
of  the  Company  of  Printers  at  Venice,  dated  1441,  relat- 
ing to  playing-cards,  printed  from  wood  blocks,  the  im- 
pressions being  taken  by  means  of  a  burnisher.  Then, 
instead  of  a  single  block,  a  series  of  blocks  was  employ- 
ed, in  engravings  of  the  jBiblia  Pauperum^  the  text  being 
printed  from  movable  types. 

We  have  now  reached  the  practice  of  printing  in  the 
present  sense  of  the  term.  The  invention  of  the  movable 
types  is  disputed  by  many  cities,  but  only  three  have  the 
slightest  claim — Harlem,  Strasburg,  and  Mentz :  Harlem 
for  Lawrence  Koster,  who,  when  "  walking  in  a  suburban 
grove,  began  first  to  fashion  beech-bark  into  letters,  which 


GUTENBERG  AND  HTS  PARTNERS.          31 

being  impressed  upon  pa- 
per, reversed  in  the  man- 
ner of  a  seal,  produced  one 
verse,  then  another,  as  his 
fancy  pleased,  to  be  for 
copies  for  the  children  of 
his  son-in-law."  Next,  he, 
with  his  son-in-law,  devised 

Type  of  a  letter.  ^         Types  set  up.    ^     «  &  ^Q  glutinoils  and  te. 

nacious  species  of  writing-ink,  which  he  had  commonly 
used  to  draw  letters ;  thence  he  expressed  entire  figured 
pictures,  with  characters  added,"  only  on  opposite  pages, 
not  printed  on  both  sides.  Afterward  he  changed  beech- 
blocks  for  lead,  and  then  for  tin.  The  tradition  adds 
that  an  unfaithful  servant,  having  fled  with  the  secret, 
set  up  for  himself  at  Strasburg  or  Mentz ;  but  the  whole 
story,  which  claims  the  substitution  of  movable  for  fixed 
letters  as  early  as  1430,  can  not  be  traced  beyond  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  is  generally  discred- 
ited as  a  romantic  fiction.  Nevertheless,  some  have  be- 
lieved that  a  book  called  Speculum  humance  Salvationis, 
of  very  rude  wooden  characters,  proceeded  from  the  Har- 
lem press  before  any  other  that  is  generally  recognized. 
Whether  movable  wooden  characters  were  ever  employ- 
ed in  any  entire  work  is  very  questionable ;  they  appear, 
however,  in  the  capital  letters  of  some  early  printed 
books.  "  But,"  says  Hallam,  "  no  expedient  of  this  kind 
could  have  fulfilled  the  great  purposes  of  this  invention, 
until  it  was  perfected  by  founding  metal  types  in  a  ma- 
trix or  mould ;  the  essential  characteristic  of  printing, 
as  distinguished  from  other  arts  that  bear  some  analogy 
to  it." 

The  invention  is  now  unhesitatingly  ascribed  to  John 
Gutenberg,  a  native  of  Mentz,  the  evidence  of  which  does 
not  rest  upon  guesses  from  dateless  wood-cuts,  but  upon 
a  legal  document,  dated  143  9,  by  which  it  is  proved  that 
Gutenberg,  being  engaged  "  in  a  wonderful  and  unknown 
art,"  admitted  certain  persons  into  partnership,  one  of 
whom  dying,  his  brother  claimed  to  be  admitted  as  his 
successor ;  and  on  Gutenberg's  refusal,  they  brought  an 
action  against  him  as  principal  partner.  From  the  evi- 
dence produced  on  the  trial,  it  was  proved  that  one  of 


32  THE   PRESS. 

the  witnesses  had  been  instructed  by  Gutenberg  to  "  take 
the  stucke  (pages)  from  the  presses,  and,  by  removing 
two  screws,  thoroughly  separate  them  from  one  another, 
so  that  no  man  may  know  what  it  is."  From  this  curi- 
ous document  (says  the  latest  investigator  of  the  sub- 
ject*) may  be  learned  that  separate  types  were  used  ; 
for  if  they  were  block,  arranged  so  as  to  print  four  pages 
(as  stated  in  the  evidence),  how  could  they  be  so  pulled 
to  pieces  that  no  one  should  know  what  they  were,  or 
how  could  the  abstraction  of  two  screws  cause  them  to 
fall  to  pieces  ?  We  are  here  reminded  that  within  com- 
paratively few  years  screws  have  been  substituted  for 
quoins,  or  wedges,  in  locking  up  the  type  in  the  chases, 
or  iron  frames,  which  may  be  a  revival  of  Gutenberg's 
screw  method  of  400  years  since. 

It  seems  that  some  sort  of  presses  were  now  used,  and 
the  transfers  no  longer  taken  by  a  burnisher  or  roller ; 
and,  lastly,  that  the  art  was  still  a  great  secret  at  the  time 
when  Roster  was  at  the  point  of  death.  Hence  it  is  man- 
ifest that  the  ingenuity  of  Gutenberg  had  made  a  vast 
advance  from  the  rude  methods  of  the  time,  and  had,  in 
fact,  invented  a  new  and  hitherto  unknown  art. 

All  this  took  place  at  Strasburg,  where  Gutenberg  re- 
sided many  years ;  but  it  did  not  lead  to  any  practical  re- 
sult, and  \hefirst  book  was  printed  at  Mentz,  near  which 
the  inventor  was  born.  Thither  Gutenberg  returned 
about  the  year  1450,  with  all  his  materials.  His  former 
partnership  had  expired,  and  at  Mentz  he  associated  him- 
self with  John  Fust,  a  wealthy  goldsmith  and  citizen, 
who,  upon  agreement  of  being  taught  the  secrets  of  the 
art,  and  admitted  into  the  participation  of  the  profits,  ad- 
vanced the  necessary  funds,  2020  florins.  The  new  part- 
nership then  hired  a  house  called  Zum  Jungen,  and  took 
into  their  employ  Peter  Schoefier  and  others.  A  lawsuit 
arose  between  the  partners  in  1455 ;  and  from  a  docu- 
ment in  existence  we  learn  that,  having  expended  the 
whole  of  his  considerable  private  fortune  in  his  experi- 
ments, Gutenberg  had  mortgaged  his  printing  materials 
to  Fust,  which  is  proved  by  the  initial  letters  used  by 

*  "Printing,"  by  T.  C.  Hansard,  Esq.  (Encyclopedia  Britannica, 
eighth  edition,  1859),  in  which  the  history  and  practice  of  the  art  are 
lucidly  traced. 


STATUE    OF    GUTENBERG.  33 

Gutenberg  and  his  partners  in  printing  works  between 
1450  and  1455,  being  likewise  used  by  Fust  and  Schoeffer 
in  the  Psalter  of  1457  and  1459.  Gutenberg  did  not, 
however,  abandon  the  unprofitable  pursuit,  but,  starting 
anew  at  Mentz,  carried  on  the  business  for  ten  years ; 
but  in  1465,  on  becoming  one  of  the  band  of  gentlemen 
pensioners  of  the  Elector  Adolphus  of  Nassau,  "  he  final- 
ly abandoned  the  pursuit  of  an  art,  which,  though  it 
caused  him  infinite  trouble  and  vexation,  has  been  more 
effectual  in  preserving  his  name  and  the  memory  of  his 
acts  than  all  the  warlike  deeds  and  great  achievements 
of  his  renowned  master  and  all  his  house"  (Hansard). 
Gutenberg  died  on  the  24th  day  of  February,  1468.  His 
printing-oifice  and  materials  were  eventually  sold  to  Nich- 
olas Bechtermunze,  of  Elfield,  whose  works  are  greatly- 
sought  after  by  the  curious,  as  they  afford  much  proof, 
by  collation,  of  the  genuineness  of  the  works  attributed 
to  his  great  predecessor. 

Gutenberg  appears  to  have  had  a  troubled  life.  When 
young,  he  became  implicated  in  an  insurrection  at  Mentz, 
and  was  compelled  to  fly  to  Strasburg;  there  necessity 
compelled  him  to  employ  himself  in  mechanical  pursuits, 
when  he  made  his  great  discovery.  On  his  return  to 
Mentz,  when  in  partnership  with  Fust,  and  Schoeffer  his 
son-in-law,  he  experienced  the  hard  fate  that  all  great  in- 
ventors have  to  endure  from  the  misconceptions  and  in- 
gratitude of  mankind.  The  Guild  of  Writers  and  the 
priests  persecuted  him,  and  even  his  partners  joined  with 
his  enemies  against  him ;  and  only  his  last  few  years  were 
passed  in  peace.  Posterity  has  endeavored,  in  some  de- 
gree, to  make  amends  for  the  ingratitude  of  the  discov- 
erer's contemporaries.  In  1837,  a  statue  of  Gutenberg, 
by  Thorwaldsen,  was  erected  at  Mentz,  and  inaugurated 
with  great  ceremony ;  and  at  high  mass,  in  the  fine  old 
Cathedral,  was  displayed  the  first  Bible  printed  by  Gu- 
tenberg. The  statue  was  erected  by  a  general  sub- 
scription, to  which  all  Europe  was  invited  to  contribute. 
One  who  witnessed  the  ceremony  writes,  with  honest 
indignation,  "  England  literally  gave  nothing  toward  the 
statue  of  a  man  who  has  done  as  much  as  any  other  sin- 
gle cause  to  make  England  what  she  is."*  The  Guten- 

*  Charles  Knight,  in  The  Old  Printer  and  Modern  Press,  1854. 
B2 


34 


TYPE-CASTING. 


berg  Society,  to  which  all  the  writers  of  the  Rhenish 
provinces  belong,  hold  a  yearly  meeting  also  in  Mentz,  to 
honor  the  memory  of  the  first  printer,  and  to  celebrate 
his  discovery. 

It  is  hard  to  apportion  the  share  of  honor  to  which 
each  of  the  partners — Gutenberg,  Fust,  and  Schoeffer — 
is  entitled  in  advancing  their  art.  Gutenberg  would 
readily  suggest  a  new  and  expeditious  method  of  manu- 
facturing types ;  the  practical  skill  of  Fust  as  a  worker 


Casting  the  Type. 

in  metals,  and  his  large  pecuniary  resources,  would  read- 
ily provide  the  necessary  appliances ;  and  the  entire  con- 
ception and  execution  of  the  casting  of  type  is  given  to 
Schreffer.  The  only  evidence  shows  that  the  partners 
had  for  some  time  taken  casts  of  types  in  moulds  of  plas- 
ter ;  for  the  types  of  Gutenberg's  earlier  efforts,  both  at 
Strasburg  and  at  Mentz,  were  cut  out  of  single  pieces  of 
wood  or  metal  with  infinite  labor  and  imperfection. 
Schoeffer  has  therefore  (Mr.  Hansard  allows)  an  undoubt- 


CAXTON   BEINGS   PRINTING   INTO   ENGLAND.  35 

ed  claim  to  be  considered  as  one  of  the  three  inventors 
of  printing ;  for  he  it  was  who  first  suggested  the  cut- 
ting of  punches,  whereby  beautiful  form  could  be  stamp- 
ed upon  the  matrix,  and  the  highest  sharpness  and  finish 
given  to  the  face.  Lambinet,  who  thinks  "  the  essence 
of  the  art  of  printing  is  in  the  engraved  punch,"  natu- 
rally gives  the  chief  credit  to  Schcefier ;  this  is  not  the 
generally-received  opinion ;  but  he  is  entitled  to  a  place 
on  the  right  hand  of  Gutenberg.  It  should  be  noted 
that  there  is  no  book  known  which  bears  the  conjoint 
names  of  Gutenberg,  Fust,  and  Schcefier,  nor  any  which 
has  the  imprint  of  Gutenberg  alone ;  but  there  are  sev- 
eral books  which,  from  internal  evidence,  are  unanimous- 
ly attributed  by  the  literati  of  all  parties  and  opinions  to 
Gutenberg's  press. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  War  was  the  means  of 
quickening  the  growth  and  extension  of  Printing.  In 
1462,  the  storming  of  Mentz  dispersed  the  workmen, 
and  gave  the  secret  to  the  world.  In  1465  it  appeared 
in  Italy;*  in  1469,  in  France;  in  1474,  Caxton  brought 
it  to  England ;  and  in  1477  it  was  introduced  into  Spain. 

It  is  generally  believed  that  William  Caxton  was  born 
in  the  Weald  of  Kent;  about  141 2,  he  was  put  appren- 
tice to  a  mercer  or  merchant  of  London,  became  a  trav- 
eling agent  or  factor  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  there 
bought  manuscripts  and  books,  with  other  merchandise. 
He  there  also  learned  the  new  art  of  Printing ;  and,  se- 
curing one  of  Fust  and  Schoefier's  fugitive  workmen  from 
Mentz,  he  established  a  printing-office  at  Cologne,  and 
there  printed  the  French  original  and  his  own  translation 
of  the  Recuyell  of  the  History  es  of  Troy.  He  afterward 
transferred  his  materials  to  England,  and  brought  over 
with  him  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  who  probably  was  the 
first  superintendent  of  Caxton's  printing  establishment. 

*  Near  Subiaco,  forty-four  miles  from  Rome,  on  a  hill  above  the 
river,  may  be  traced  the  ruins  of  Nero's  villa.  It  was  in  this  villa,  as 
we  are  told  by  Tacitus  and  Philostratus,  that  the  cup  of  the  tyrant 
was  struck  by  lightning  while  he  was  in  the  act  of  drinking,  and  the 
table  overthrown  by  the  shock.  In  propinquity,  which  almost  sug- 
gests a  parallel,  is  the  monastery  of  Santa  Scolastica,  the  first  place  in 
Italy  in  which  the  printing-press  was  set  up  by  the  German  printers, 
Swcynheim  and  Panartz  :  a  copy  of  their  edition  of  Lactantius,  their 
first  production,  dated  14G5,  is  still  preserved  in  the  monastery. 


36  FIKST   FEINTING   IN   ENGLAND. 

Tie  set  up  his  first  press  at  Westminster,  perhaps  in  one 
of  the  chapels  attached  to  the  Abbey,  and  certainly  un- 
'der  the  protection  of  the  abbot  ;*  and  he  there  produced 
the  first  book  printed  in  England,  The  Game  of  Chesse. 
completed  on  the  last  day  of  March,  1474.  His  "  capital 
work"  was  a  Book  of  the  Noble  Historyes  of  Kyny 
Arthur  in  1485,  the  most  beautiful  production  of  his 
press.  He  died  in  1491,  being  about  fourscore  years  of 
age:  his  industry  and  devotedness  is  recorded  in  the 
fact  that  he  finished  his  translation  of  the  Vitce  Patrum, 
from  French  into  English,  on  the  last  day  of  his  life. 

Caxton  was  buried  in  the  old  church  of  St.  Margaret, 
built  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  and  of  which  few  traces 
remain.  The  parish  books  contain  an  entry  of  the  ex- 
pense "  for  iiij  torches"  and  "  the  belle"  at  the  old  print- 
er's "  bureying ;"  and  the  same  books  record  the  church- 
wardens' selling  for  6s.  8cZ.  one  of  the  books  bequeathed 
to  the  church  by  Caxton  !  In  the  chancel  a  tablet  to  his 
memory  was  raised  in  1820  by  the  Roxburghe  Club. 

*  But  a  very  curious  placard,  in  Caxton's  largest  type,  and  now 
preserved  in  the  library  of  Brazen-nose  College,  Oxford,  shows  that 
he  printed  in  the  Almonry ;  for  in  this  placard  he  invites  customers 
to  "come  to  Westmonester  in  to  the  Almonestrye  at  the  Reed  Pale," 
the  name  by  which  was  known  a  house  in  which  Caxton  is  said  to 
have  lived.  It  stood  on  the  north  side  of  the  Almonry,  with  its  back 
against  that  of  a  house  on  the  south  side  of  Tothill  Street.  Bagford 
describes  this  house  as  of  brick,  with  the  sign  of  the  King's  Head :  it 
is  stated  to  have  fallen  down  in  November,  1845,  before  the  removal 
of  the  other  dwellings  in  the  Almonry,  to  form  a  new  line  (Victoria 
Street)  from  Broad  Sanctuary  to  Pimlico.  A  beam  of  wood  was 
saved  from  the  materials  of  the  house,  and  from  it  have  been  made  a 
chessboard  and  two  sets  of  chessmen,  as  appropriate  memorials  of 
Caxton's  first  labor  in  England — The  Game  and  Playe  of  the  Chesse. 
According  to  a  view  of  Caxton's  house,  engraved  by  G.  Cooke  in 
1827,  it  was  three-storied,  and  had  a  gallery  or  balcony  to  the  upper 
floor,  with  a  window  in  its  bold  gable. — (Curiosities  of  London.}  The 
site  of  Caxton's  house  is  now  included  in  the  Westminster  Hotel  Com- 
pany's premises. 

Note. — The  presses  of  Seth  Adams  &  Co.,  of  Boston,  are  the  best 
now  made  for  book-printing.  For  this  purpose  they  are  in  general 
use  throughout  the  United  States,  and  are  found,  under  proper  man- 
agement, to  give  clear  impressions  of  the  finest  wood-cuts.  Harper's 
Magazine,  the  excellence  of  whose  typographical  execution  is  thought 
remarkable,  not  only  here,  but  in  Europe,  is  printed  from  Adams 
presses,  more  than  forty  of  which  are  constantly  in  operation  in  the 
Harper  Printing  Establishment. 


THE   FIEST   PEINTING-PKESS.  39 

This  tablet  (a  chaste  work  by  Westmacott)  was  origin- 
ally intended  to  have  been  placed  in  Westminster  Ab- 
bey ;  but  the  fees  for  its  erection  were  so  great,  that  ap- 
plication was  made  to  the  churchwardens  of  St.  Marga- 
ret's, who,  as  a  mark  of  respect  to  their  parishioner's 
memory,  allowed  it  to  be  placed  in  the  church  without 
any  of  the  customary  fees.  It  was  proposed,  several 
years  since,  to  erect  at  Westminster  a  memorial  statue 
of  Caxton,  but  the  fund  raised  for  that  purpose  now  en- 
larges the  Printers'  Pension  Society's  sphere  of  benevo- 
lence. 

We  must  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  first  Presses.  Gu- 
tenberg is  thought  to  have  felt  the  want  of  a  machine  of 
sufficient  pOAver  to  take  the  impressions  of  the  types  or 
blocks  which  he  employed ;  nor  is  it  supposed  that,  with 
cutting  type,  forming  screws,  making  and  inventing  ink, 
he  could  have  had  time  to  construct  a  press,  even  had  he 
possessed  the  requisite  mechanical  skill.  His  junction 
with  Fust  and  Schoefier  is  thought  to  have  supplied  the 
defect. 

The  earliest  form  of  printing-press  very  closely  resem- 
bled the  common  screw-press,  as  the  cheese  or  napkin 
press,  with  some  contrivance  for  running  the  form  of  type, 
when  inked,  under  the  pressure  (obtained  from  the  screw 
by  means  of  a  lever  inserted  into  the  spindle),  and  back 
again  when  the  pressure  is  made.  The  presses  used  in 
the  office  of  Fust  and  Schoeffer  are  believed  to  have  dif- 
fered in  no  essential  form  from  the  above,  until  improved 
in  the  details  by  Blew,  a  printer  of  Amsterdam,  in  1620. 
Other  improvements  were  from  time  to  time  introduced, 
but  they  were  all  superseded  about  the  commencement 
of  the  present  century,  when  the  old  wooden  press  gave 
way  to  Earl  Stanhope's  invention  of  the  iron  press  which 
bears  his  name.  Its  novelty  consisted  in  an  improved 
application  of  the  power  to  the  spindle  and  screw,  where- 
by it  was  greatly  increased.  Lord  Stanhope  also  made 
some  improvements  in  the  process  of  stereotyping,  and 
in  the  construction  of  locks  for  canals ;  he  invented  an 
ingenious  machine  for  performing  arithmetical  opera- 
tions ;  during  great  part  of  his  life  he  studied  the  action 
of  the  electric  fluid;  and  in  1779  he  made  public  his 
theory  of  what  is  called  "  the  returning  stroke  of  light- 


40 


THE   PRINTING-MACHINE. 


mug."     Lord  Stanhope  bequeathed  £500  to  the  Royal 
Society,  of  which  he  had  been  a  fellow  fifty-one  years. 


The  Hand  Press. 


The  principle  of  the  Stanhope  press  has  been  followed 
out  by  several  subsequent  inventors,  and  improvements 
of  mechanical  detail  introduced,  tending  to  the  economy 
of  time  and  labor,  and  to  precision  of  workmanship.  The 
printing-press,  however,  proved  inadequate  to  a  rate  of 
production  equal  to  the  demand;  and  as  early  as  1790, 
even  before  the  Stanhope  press  was  generally  known,  Mr. 
W.  Nicholson  patented  a  PRINTING-MACHINE,  of  which 
the  chief  points  were  the  following:  "The  type,  being 
rubbed  or  scraped  narrower  toward  the  bottom,  was  to 
be  fixed  upon  a  cylinder,  in  order,  as  it  were,  to  radiate 
from  the  centre  of  it.  This  cylinder,  with  its  type,  was 


THE    PRINTING-MACHINE.  41 

to  revolve  in  gear  with  another  cylinder  covered  with 
soft  leather  (the  impression  cylinder),  and  the  type  re- 
ceived its  ink  from  another  cylinder,  to  which  the  inking 
apparatus  was  applied.  The  paper  was  impressed  by 


The  Koller. 

passing  between  the  type  and  impression  cylinders." 
(Hansard.)  Such  was  the  first  printing-machine :  it  was 
never  brought  into  use,  although  most  of  Nicholson's 
plans  were,  when  modified,  adopted  by  after-constructors. 

Konig,  a  German,  conceived  nearly  the  same  idea ;  and 
meeting  with  the  encouragement  in  England  which  he 
failed  to  receive  on  the  Continent,  constructed  a  print- 
ing-machine for  Mr.  Walter ;  and  on  the  28th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1814,  the  readers  of  the  Times  were  informed  that 
they  were  then,  for  the  first  time,  reading  a  newspaper 
printed  by  machinery  driven  by  steam-power,  and  work- 
ing at  the  rate  of  1100  impressions  per  hour.  In  this 
machine  the  ordinary  type  was  used,  and  laid  upon  a 
flat  surface,  the  impression  being  given  by  the  form  pass- 
ing under  a  cylinder  of  great  size.  This  machine  was, 
however,  very  complicated,  and  was  soon  superseded  by 
that  of  Messrs.  Applegath  and  Cowper,  the  novel  fea- 
tures of  which  were,  accuracy  in  the  register  (that  is,  one 
page  falling  precisely  upon  the  back  of  the  other),  the 
method  of  inking  the  types,  and  the  simplification  of  very 
complicated  parts ;  and  this  machine,  with  numerous 
modifications  by  different  makers,  is  now  in  general  use, 
so  that  the  foremost  improver  of  the  printing-machine  is 
Augustus  Applegath.  The  simplicity  of  the  operation 
is  admirable:  the  whole  machine  is  put  in  motion  by 
means  of  a  strap,  which  passes  over  a  wheel  under  the 
frame,  and  is  mostly  worked  by  steam,  it  requiring  only 
two  boys,  one  to  lay  on,  and  the  other  to  take  off  the 
sheets. 

The  next  great  improvement  was  the  construction  of 


42  THE   PBINTING-MACHINE. 

the  vertical  machine  by  Mr.  Applegath,  in  which  he 
abandoned  the  reciprocating  motion  (occasioning  a  great 
waste  of  motive  power),  and  instead  of  placing  the  type 
on  a  plane  table,  placed  it  on  a  cylinder  of  large  dimen- 
sions, which  revolves  on  a  vertical  axis,  with  a  continuous 
rotatory  motion.  "  No  description,"  says  Mr.  Hansard, 
"  can  give  any  adequate  idea  of  the  scene  presented  by 
one  of  these  machines  in  full  work — the  maze  of  wheels 
and  rollers,  the  intricate  lines  of  swift-moving  tapes,  the 
flight  of  sheets,  and  the  din  of  machinery.  The  central 
drum  moves  at  the  rate  of  six  feet  per  second,  or  one 
revolution  in  three  seconds;  the  impression  cylinders 
make  five  revolutions  in  the  same  time.  The  layer-on 
delivers  two  sheets  every  five  seconds,  consequently  six- 
teen sheets  are  printed  in  that  brief  space.  The  diameter 
of  an  eight-feeder,  including  the  galleries  for  the  layers- 
on,  is  twenty-five  feet.  The  Times  employs  two  of  these 
eight-cylinder  machines,  each  of  which  averages  12,000 
impressions  per  hour;  and  one  nine-cylinder,  which 
prints  16,000."  Messrs.  Hoe,  of  New  York,  have  con- 
structed machines  differing  from  Applegath's  Vertical 
chiefly  in  the  drum  and  impression  cylinders  being  hori- 
zontal :  one  of  these  machines  has  been  constructed  with 
ten  cylinders  for  working  the  Times  at  20,000  impres- 
sions per  hour.  Another  American  machine  has  been 
constructed  to  work  22,000  double  impressions  per  hour. 
"  Could  Gutenberg,  if  he  were  to  rise  from  the  dead, 
imagine  that  at  the  present  day  there  would  be  more 
than  4000  presses  in  Europe,  each  house  being  designated 
by  its  press ;  and  of  these,  600  in  the  city  of  London 
alone — and  1000  printing-machines  in  England,  supply- 
ing the  printing  requirements,  on  such  a  scale  as  this,  for 
her  populations !" — Lecture  delivered  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution, by  Mr.  Henry  Bradbury,  1858. 


The  Composing-stick. 


WHO  INVENTED  GUNPOWDER? 

"  FROM  the  earliest  dawnings  of  policy  to  this  day," 
says  Burke,  "  the  invention  of  men  has  been  sharpening 
and  improving  the  mystery  of  murder,  from  the  first 
rude  essay  of  clubs  and  stones  to  the  present  perfection 
of  gunnery,  cannoneering,  bombarding,  mining."  The 
imputed  universality  of  the  class  of  invention  may  ac- 
count for  the  difficulty  of  tracing  the  special  practice  of 
it  in  the  composition  of  Gunpowder  with  certainty  to 
any  period  or  nation.  The  evidence  is  conflicting,  and 
it  ranges  from  several  centuries  before  the  commence- 
ment of  our  era  to  the  claim  of  the  German  monk  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  of  whom  a  commemorative  statue 
was  erected  so  lately  as  the  year  1853. 

The  earliest  account  extant  on  the  subject  of  Gun- 
powder exists  in  a  code  of  Gentoo  laws,  where  it  is  men- 
tioned as  applied  to  fire-arms ;  this  document,  being  of 
some  fifteen  centuries  before  Christ,  is  thought  by  many 
to  have  been  coeval  with  the  time  of  Moses !  The  notice 
occurs  in  the  Sanscrit  preface,  translated  by  Halhed,  and 
is  as  follows :  "  The  magistrate  shall  not  make  war  with 
any  deceitful  machine,  nor  with  poisoned  weapons,  nor 
with  cannon  and  guns,  nor  any  kind  of  fire-arms."  Hal- 
hed observes :  "  The  reader,  no  doubt,  will  wonder  to 
find  a  prohibition  of  fire-arms  in  records  of  such  remote 
antiquity;  and  he  will  probably  hence  renew  the  sus- 
picion which  has  long  been  deemed  absurd,  that  Alex- 
ander the  Great  did  absolutely  meet  with  some  weapons 
of  this  kind  in  India,  as  a  passage  in  Quintus  Curtius 
seems  to  ascertain.  Gunpowder  has  been  known  in 
China  as  well  as  in  Hindostan  far  beyond  all  periods  of 
investigation.  The  word  '  fire-arms'  is  literally  translated 
by  the  Sanscrit  agnee-aster  (agny astro),  a  weapon  of 
fire.  In  their  earliest  form  they  are  described  to  have 
been  a  kind  of  dart  tipped  with  fire,  and  discharged  by 
some  sort  of  explosive  compound  from  a  bamboo. 
Among  several  extraordinary  properties  of  this  weapon, 


44  GUNPOWDER    IN   CHINA. 

one  was,  that,  after  it  had  taken  its  flight,  it  divided  into 
several  separate  streams  of  flame,  each  of  which  took 
effect,  and  which,  when  once  kindled,  could  not  be  ex- 
tinguished ;  but  this  kind  of  agnee-aster  is  now  lost." 

Dutens  has  selected  many  passages  from  Greek  and 
Latin  authors  favorable  to  the  opinion  that  Gunpowder 
was  known  to  the  ancients.  He  mentions  the  attempt 
of  Salmoneus  to  imitate  thunder,  and  of  the  Brahmins  to 
do  the  same  thing;  but  his  most  remarkable  quotation 
is  from  the  life  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  written  by  Philos- 
tratus,  showing  that  Alexander  was  prevented  from  ex- 
tending his  conquests  in  India  because  of  the  use  of 
Gunpowder  by  a  people  called  Oxydraca3,  who  repulsed 
the  enemy  "  with  storms  of  lightning  and  thunder-bolts, 
hurled  upon  them  from  above."  Philostratus  is  not  re- 
markable for  veracity ;  but  taking  into  consideration  the 
records  of  Oriental  history,  and  the  fact  of  pyrotechny 
having  been  cultivated  from  time  immemorial  in  India 
and  China,  his  assertion  does  not  seem  improbable.  In 
India  and  many  other  parts  of  Asia,  nitre  occurs  in  great 
quantity,  spread  over  the  surface  of  the  earth.  Dr. 
Scoffern,  the  experienced  writer  on  this  subject,  supposes 
a  fire  lighted  on  such  a  spot :  the  most  careless  observer 
must  have  noticed  the  effect  of  the  saltpetre  in  augment- 
ing the  flame ;  if  then,  attention  having  been  directed  to 
this  phenomenon,  charcoal  and  saltpetre  had  been  mixed 
together  purposely,  Gunpowder  would  have  been  form- 
ed. The  third  ingredient,  sulphur,  is  not  absolutely 
necessary;  indeed,  very  good  Gunpowder,  chemically 
speaking,  can  be  made  without  it.  Sulphur  tends  to  in- 
crease the  plasticity  of  the  mass,  and  better  enables  it  to 
be  made  into  and  to  retain  the  form  of  grains. 

It  has  been  said  that  Gunpowder  was  used  in  China  as 
early  as  the  year  A.D.  85.  Sir  George  Staunton  observes 
that  "  the  knowledge  of  Gunpowder  in  China  and  India 
seemed  coeval  with  the  most  distant  historic  events. 
Among  the  Chinese  it  has  at  all  times  been  applied  to 
useful  purposes,  as  blasting  rocks,  etc.,  and  in  the  making 
of  fire-works ;  although  it  has  not  been  directed  through 
strong  metallic  tubes,  as  the  Europeans  did  soon  after 
they  had  discovered  it."  In  short,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  a  sort  of  Gunpowder  was  at  an  early  period  used  in 


GUNPOWDER   IN   EUKOPE.  45 

China,  and  in  other  parts  of  Asia ;  and  Barrow's  state- 
ment that  the  Chinese  soldiery  make  their  Gunpowder, 
and  every  soldier  prepares  his  own,  is  highly  character- 
istic of  the  people.  Against  the  claim  of  the  Chinese  to 
the  invention,  it  is  urged  that  the  silence  of  Marco  Polo 
respecting  Gunpowder  may  be  considered  as  at  least  a 
negative  proof  that  it  was  unknown  to  the  Chinese  in 
the  time  of  Kublai  Khan. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  these  people,  nor  in 
their  "  Dictionary  of  Arts  and  Sciences,"  that  bears  any 
allusion  to  their  knowledge  of  cannon  before  the  invasion 
of  Ghengis  Khan,  when  (in  the  year  1219)  mention  is 
made  of  ho-pao,  or  fire-tubes,  the  name  of  cannon,  which 
are  said  to  have  killed  men,  and  to  set  fire  to  inflamma- 
ble substances ;  they  are  said,  too,  to  have  been  used  by 
the  Tartars,  not  by  the  Chinese,  and  were  probably  noth- 
ing more  than  the  enormous  rockets  known  in  India 'at 
the  time  of  the  Mohammedan  invasion  (Quarterly  Re- 
view, No.  41). 

Numerous  documents,  however,  show  that  Gunpow- 
der was  known  in  the  East  at  periods  of  great  antiquity, 
whence  it  might  have  been  introduced  into  Europe, 
either  through  the  medium  of  the  Byzantine  Greeks,  or 
by  the  Saracens  into  Spain.  In  a  paper  read  about  fifty- 
five  years  since  before  the  French  Institute,  M.  Langles 
maintained  that  the  use  of  Gunpowder  was  conveyed  to 
us  by  the  Crusaders,  who  are  stated  to  have  employed  it 
at  the  siege  of  Mecca  in  690 :  he  contended  that  they  had 
derived  it  from  the  Indians. 

Mr.  Hallam  considers  it  nearly  certain  that  Gunpow- 
der was  brought  by  the  Saracens  into  Europe.  Its  use 
in  engines  of  war,  though  they  may  seem  to  have  been 
rather  like  our  fire-works  than  artillery,  is  mentioned  by 
an  Arabic  writer  in  the  Escurial  collection  about  the 
year  1249.  The  words  which  are  thought  to  mean  gun- 
powder are  translated  pulvis  nitratus.  The  Moors  or 
Arabs,  in  Spain,  appear  to  have  used  gunpowder  and 
cannon  as  early  as  1312  ;  and  in  1331,  when  the  King  of 
Granada  laid  siege  to  Alicant,  he  battered  its  walls  with 
iron  bullets,  discharged  by  fire  from  machines;  which 
novel  mode  of  warfare  (says  the  chronicle)  inspired  great 
terror.  And  when  Alonzo  XT.,  King  of  Castile,  besieged 


46  GUNPOWDER   IN   EUROPE. 

Algesiras  in  1342-3,  the  Moorish  garrison,  in  defending 
the  place,  employed  truenos  (literally  thunders),  which  a 
passage  in  the  chronicle  proves  to  have  been  a  species  of 
cannon  fired  with  powder.  And  Petrarch,  in  a  passage 
written  before  1344,  and  quoted  by  Muratori,  speaks  of 
the  art  of  making  Gunpowder  as  nuper  rara,  nunc  com- 
munis  (recently  rare,  now  common). 

Another  authority  traces  Gunpowder  to  the  Arabs, 
but  at  an  earlier  date  than  hitherto  mentioned,  and  at 
the  same  time  seeks  to  identify  it  with  an  invention  of 
much  earlier  antiquity.  The  celebrated  Oriental  scholar, 
M.  Reinaud,  has  discovered  an  Arabic  MS.  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  which  proves  that  compositions  identical 
with  Gunpowder  in  all  but  the  granulations  were,  and 
had  been  for  a  long  time  previously,  in  the  possession  of 
the  Arabs ;  and  that  there  is  every  probability  they  had 
obtained  them  from  the  Chinese  in  the  ninth  century. 
Many  of  these  were  called  "  Greek  fire ;"  and  comparing 
the  account  of  Joinville,  of  the  wars  on  the  Nile  in  the 
time  of  St.  Louis,  with  the  Arabic  recipes,  there  can  be 
little  doubt  we  are  now  in  possession  of  what  was  then 
termed  "  Greek  fire."  Mr.  Grove,  F.R.S.,  who  has  inves- 
tigated the  subject  experimentally  as  well  as  historically, 
concludes  that  the  main  element  of  Greek  fire,  as  contra- 
distinguished from  other  inflammable  substances,  was 
nitre,  or  a  salt  containing  much  oxygen ;  that  Greek  fire 
and  Gunpowder  were  substantially  the  same  thing ;  and 
that  the  development  of  the  invention  had  been  very  slow 
and  gradual,  and  had  taken  place  long  antecedent  to  the 
date  of  Schwartz,  the  monk  of  Cologne,  A.D.  1320,  to 
whom  the  invention  of  Gunpowder  is  generally  attribu- 
ted ;  thus  adding  to  the  innumerable,  if  not  unexception- 
able cases  in  which  discoveries  commonly  attributed  to  ac- 
cident, and  to  a  single  mind,  are  found,  upon  investiga- 
tion, to  have  been  progressive,  and  the  result  of  the  con- 
tinually-improving knowledge  of  successive  generations. 

It  was  long  the  custom  to  attribute  the  invention  of 
Gunpowder  to  our  philosopher,  Roger  Bacon ;  but  a  pas- 
sage in  his  Opus  Ma  jus,  written  in  1267,  proves  that  in- 
stead of  claiming  the  merit  of  the  discovery,  he  mentions 
Gunpowder  as  a  substance  well  known  in  his  time,  and 
even  employed  by  the  makers  of  fire-works ;  and  he  mi- 


GUNPOWDEK   IN   ENGLAND.  47 

nutely  describes  a  common  cracker.  In  his  treatise  De 
/Secretis  Operibus  Artis  et  Naturae,  he  says,  that  from 
"  saltpetre  and  other  ingredients  we  are  able  to  make  a 
fire  that  shall  burn  at  any  distance."  In  another  passage 
he  indicates  two  ingredients,  saltpetre  and  sulphur,  and 
"  Lura  nope  cum  ubre,"  which  is  a  transposition  of  the 
words  "carbonum  pulvere"  (charcoal  in  powder).  At 
the  period  when  Bacon  lived,  Spam  was  the  favorite  seat 
of  literature  and  art.  Bacon  is  known  to  have  traveled 
through  Spain,  and  to  have  been  conversant  with  Arabic, 
so  that  he  might  have  seen  the  manuscript  in  the  Escurial 
collection,  which  is  at  least  as  probable  a  supposition  as 
that  he  saw  the  treatise  of  Marcus  Graecus.  Some  fifty 
years  later,  1320,  is  the  date  claimed  by  the  Germans  for 
the  invention  due  to  their  monk,  Bartholdus  Schwartz,  in 
whose  honor  a  stone  statue  has  been  erected  in  the  town 
of  Freiburg,  where  he  was  born ;  and  in  reply  to  earlier 
claims  to  the  invention,  it  is  maintained  that  to  Schwartz 
is  due  the  merit,  because  he  did  not  learn  the  secret  from 
any  one  else. 

Nearly  two  hundred  years  before  this  date,  Humboldt 
states  that  a  species  of  Gunpowder  was  used  to  blast  the 
rock  in  the  Rammelsberg,  in  the  Hartz  Mountains. 

Authorized  statements  negative  the  assertion  by  Cam- 
den,  Kennett,  and  other  writers,  that  no  Gunpowder  was 
manufactured  in  England  until  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
Its  first  application  to  the  firing  of  artillery  has  been 
commonly  ascribed  to  the  English  at  the  battle  of  Cres- 
sy,  in  August,  1343  ;  but  hitherto  the  fact  has  depended 
almost  solely  on  the  evidence  of  a  single  Italian  writer, 
and  the  word  "  gunners"  having  been  met  with  in  some 
public  accounts  of  the  reign  of  Edward  III.  The  Rev. 
Joseph  Hunter  has,  however,  from  records  of  the  period, 
shown  the  names  of  the  persons  employed  in  the  manu- 
facture of  Gunpowder  (out  of  saltpetre  and  "  quick  sul- 
phur," without  any  mention  of  charcoal),  with  the  quan- 
tities supplied  to  the  king  just  previously  to  his  expedi- 
tion to  France  in  June  or  July,  1346.  In  the  records  it 
is  termed  pulvis  pro  ingeniis  ;  and  they  establish  that  a 
considerable  weight  had  been  supplied  to  the  English 
army  subsequently  to  its  landing  at  La  Hogue,  and  pre- 
viously to  the  battle  of  Cressy ;  and  that  before  Edward 


48  GUNPOWDER   FIEST   MADE   IN   ENGLAND. 

III.  engaged  in  the  siege  of  Calais,  he  issued  an  order  to 
the  proper  officers  in  England,  requiring  them  to  pur- 
chase as  much  saltpetre  and  sulphur  as  they  could  pro- 
cure. Sharon  Turner,  in  his  Ilistory  of  England,  has 
also  shown,  from  an  order  of  Richard  III.  in  the  Harleian 
MSS.,  that  Gunpowder  was  made  in  England  in  1483 ; 
and  Mr.  Eccleston  (English  Antiquities]  states  that  the 
English  both  made  and  exported  it  as  early  as  1411. 
Nevertheless,  Gunpowder  long  remained  a  costly  article ; 
and  even  in  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  on  account  of  its  dear- 
ness,  "  the  trained  bands  are  much  discouraged  in  their 
exercising."  In  1686,  it  appears  from  the  Clarendon 
Correspondence  that  the  wholesale  price  ranged  from 
about  £2  105.  to  £3  a  barrel. 

John  Evelyn,  of  Wotton,  Surrey,  asserts  that  his  an- 
cestors were  the  first  who  manufactured  Gunpowder  in 
England ;  but  this  must  be  regarded  as  the  reintroduc- 
tion.  His  grandfather  transferred  the  patent  to  Sir  John 
Evelyn's  grandfather,  of  Godstone,  in  whose  family  it 
continued  till  the  Civil  Wars.  As  we  stroll  along  the 
valley  in  which  lies  Wotton  Place,  we  are  reminded  that 
upon  the  rivulet  which  winds  through  this  peaceful  re- 
gion was  once  made  the  "  warlike  contrivance."  Evelyn, 
in  a  letter  to  John  Aubrey,  dated  February  8, 1675,  says 
that  on  this  stream,  near  his  house,  formerly  stood  many 
powder-mills,  erected  by  his  ancestors,  who  were  the  very 
first  that  brought  that  invention  into  England ;  before 
which  we  had  all  our  powder  from  Flanders.  He  also 
describes  the  blowing-up  of  one  of  these  mills,  when  a 
beam,  fifteen  inches  in  diameter,  at  Wotton  Place,  was 
broken ;  and  on  the  blowing-up  of  another  mill  lower 
down,  toward  Sheire,  there  was  shot  through  a  cottage 
a  piece  of  timber,  "  which  took  off  a  poor  woman's  head 
as  she  was  spinning." 

The  Manufacture  of  Gunpowder  may  be  described  from  a  visit  by 
Dr.  Scoffern  to  one  of  her  majesty's  mills  at  Waltham,  in  the  Essex 
Marshes.  First,  as  to  the  ingredients.  The  saltpetre  (principally  im- 
ported from  Bengal)  is  boiled  in  large  pans,  evaporated,  and  crystal- 
lized ;  and  the  charcoal  is  prepared  from  the  alder  and  willow,  which 
abound  in  the  neighborhood.  These  processes  are  conducted  in  build- 
ings at  some  distance  from  the  Gunpowder  Mills,  Avhithcr  the  materi- 
als are  carried,  by  water,  in  covered  boats,  to  the  works.  There  the 
saltpetre,  brimstone,  and  charcoal  are  ground  separately  in  mills,  each 
consisting  of  a  pair  of  heavy  circular  stones  slowly  revolving  on  a 


MANUFACTURE    OF   GUNPOWDER.  49 

stone  bed.  Next  the  ingredients  are  conveyed  to  ' '  the  Mixing  House, " 
where  visitors  wear  over-shoes.  Here,  in  bins,  are  the  saltpetre,  brim- 
stone, and  charcoal,  weighed  in  the  exact  proportions :  saltpetre  75, 
brimstone  10,  and  charcoal  15,  in  every  100  parts.  Of  the  three  in- 
gredients, 42  Ibs.  are  placed  in  a  hollow  drum,  which  revolves  rapidly, 
and  contains  a  fly-pan,  which  rotates  in  an  opposite  direction;  in 
about  five  minutes  a  complete  mixture  is  effected,  and  the  charge  is 
received  in  a  bag  tied  over  the  lower  orifice  of  the  drum. 

The  "composition"  is  next  taken  to  "the  Incorporating  Mills, "  and 
is  now  a  combustible  compound,  to  obtain  its  explosive  power  by  the 
ingredients  being  thoroughly  incorporated.  The  mill  consists  of  a 
pair  of  circular  stones  ("  runners"),  weighing  about  3£  tons  each,  and 
slowly  rolling  over  the  powder,  which  is  placed  on  the  stone  bed  of 
the  mill,  surrounded  by  a  huge  wooden  basin.  The  powder  is  pre- 
viously damped,  as  it  could  not  be  safely  ground  dry ;  about  7  pints  of 
water  ("liquor")  being  added  to  the  charge  of  42  Ibs.  of  powder  dur- 
ing 3-^  hours,  the  time  of  grinding.  To  insure  this  with  precision, 
and  to  obviate  the  chance  of  any  irregularity  in  a  clock,  the  water- 
wheel  which  works  two  of  these  mills  in  one  house  also  marks  its  rev- 
olutions on  a  dial,  so  that  the  attendant  can  never  be  mistaken  in  the 
time  the  charge  has  been  "on" — a  most  important  point,  where  the 
over-grinding  of  the  too  dry  powder  might  cause  it  to  explode. 
Sometimes  a  portion  of  the  wood-work  of  the  roof,  or  mill,  becoming 
detached — such  as  a  cog  of  the  wheel — and  falling  into  the  pan,  acts 
as  a  skid  on  one  of  the  runners,  and  by  friction  produces  heat  enough 
to  cause  a  mass  of  powder  to  explode.  As  a  protection,  over  each 
house  containing  a  pair  of  mills  is  suspended  a  flat  board,  which,  in 
case  of  an  explosion,  is  first  blown  upward,  and,  being  connected  by 
wires  with  a  cistern  of  water  over  the  pan  of  the  fellow  mill,  upsets 
the  same,  and  drowns  the  Gunpowder.  The  attendants  are  as  little 
as  possible  in  these  mills,  and  only  work  by  daylight. 

More  hazardous  processes,  however,  follow.  The  powder  thus  in- 
corporated is  in  hard,  flat  lumps,  and  has  again  to  be  reduced  to  dust 
in  the  "Breaking-down  House,"  by  conveying  it  down  an  inclined 
plane,  through  rollers,  which  crush  nearly  500  Ibs.  in  the  hour.  The 
powder  is  then  taken  to  "the  Press  House,"  and  there,  between  gun- 
metal  plates,  is  pressed  in  thin  cakes  to  one  third  its  bulk  by  a  power 
of  700  tons  in  a  hydraulic  press.  The  cakes  are  roughly  broken  up, 
and  sent  in  baskets  to  "the  Granulating  Mill,"  where  the  powder  is 
again  broken  down  into  grains,  the  size  being  regulated  by  sieves. 
The  floor  is  covered  with  hides  fastened  down  with  copper  nails,  and 
the  mill  can  be  started  or  stopped  by  a  rope  passing  through  the  wall, 
which  is  bomb-proof.  The  powder  is  then  dried,  by  heat,  in  "the 
Stoving-room,"  which  is  flanked  externally  by  "traversers"  (mounds 
of  earth  30  feet  thick),  to  confine  explosion,  should  it  happen,  as 
much  as  possible  to  one  house.  Lastly,  the  powder  is  sifted  in  "the 
Dusting  House,"  where  the  sieves  revolve  with  great  velocity;  the 
dust  escapes  through  the  meshes,  and  the  Gunpowder  is  drawn  off 
through  a  sort  of  tap,  into  barrels,  for  packing.  The  finest  powder 
is  "  glazed"  by  black-lead  being  shaken  up  with  it ;  but  cannon  pow- 
der has  not  this  finish. 

c 


THE  BAROMETER:  TORRICELLI  AND 
PASCAL. 

THE  invention  of  the  Barometer  is  one  of  the  most 
curious  events  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  No  new 
discovery,  not  even  those  substantiated  by  the  telescope, 
ever  knocked  so  hard  at  the  door  of  a  received  system, 
or  in  a  manner  which  so  imperiously  demanded  admis- 
sion. The  circumstances  attending  it  are  briefly  these : 

The  phenomena  of  the  common  Pump  had  been  well 
known  for  more  than  a  century  at  least  before  the  Chris- 
tian era.  The  mode  of  explanation  was  simply  the  well- 
known  maxim  that  "  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum ;"  but  no 
attempt  had  been  made  to  discover  why.  Sir  John 
Herschel  observes,  that  "  if  any  such  abhorrence  existed, 
and  had  the  force  of  an  acting  cause  which  could  urge 
water  a  single  foot  into  a  pipe,  there  is  no  reason  why 
the  same  principle  should  not  carry  it  up  two,  three,  or 
any  number  of  feet ;  none  why  it  should  suddenly  stop 
at  a  certain  height,  and  refuse  to  rise  higher,  however 
violent  the  suction  might  be — nay,  even  fall  back,  if  pur- 
posely forced  up  too  high." 

It  is  related  that  the  engineers  of  Cosmo  de  Medicis, 
wishing  to  raise  water  higher  than  thirty-two  feet  by 
means  of  a  sucking-pump,  they  found  it  impossible  to 
take  it  higher  than  thirty-one  feet.  Galileo,  the  Italian 
sage,  was  applied  to  in  vain  for  a  solution  of  the  diffi- 
culty. It  had  been  the  belief  of  all  ages  that  the  water 
followed  the  piston  from  the  horror  which  nature  had 
of  a  vacuum ;  and  Galileo  improved  the  dogma*  by  tell- 
ing the  engineers  that  this  horror  was  not  felt,  or  at 
least  not  shown,  beyond  heights  of  thirty-one  feet !  At 

*  The  above  story  is  told  in  several  different  ways  (it  has  been  said, 
for  instance,  that  the  answer  of  Galileo  was  ironical) ;  but,  whichever 
may  be  true,  it  is  most  probable  that  it  led  him  to  abandon  the  theory 
of  nature's  horror,  though  without  substituting  any  other.  It  has 
been  thought  that,  before  his  death,  Galileo  suspected  the  true  ex- 
planation. 


PASCAL  AND  THE  BAKOHETER.  51 

his  desire,  however,  his  disciple,  Torricelli,  investigated 
the  subject.  He  found  that  when  the  fluid  raised  was 
mercury,  the  horror  of  a  vacuum  did  not  extend  beyond 
thirty  inches,  because  the  mercury  would  not  rise  to  a 
greater  height;  and  hence  he  concluded  that  a  column 
of  water  thirty-one  feet  high,  and  one  of  mercury  thirty 
inches,  exerted  the  same  pressure  upon  the  same  base, 
and  that  the  antagonistic  force  which  counterbalanced 
them  must  in  both  cases  be  the  same ;  and  having  learn- 
ed from  Galileo  that  the  air  was  a  heavy  fluid,  he  con- 
cluded, and  published  the  conclusion  in  1645,  that  the 
weight  of  the  air  was  the  cause  of  the  rise  of  water  to 
thirty-one  feet,  and  of  mercury  to  thirty  inches.  He 
then  filled  a  tube,  more  than  three  feet  long,  and  open  at 
one  end  only,  with  mercury ;  and  then,  stopping  the 
open  end  with  the  finger,  he  placed  the  tube  in  an  open 
vessel  of  mercury,  with  the  open  end  downward.  On 
removing  the  finger,  the  mercury  in  the  tube  sank  until 
it  stood  in  the  tube  at  about  twenty-eight  inches  higher 
than  the  mercury  in  the  vessel.  He  thus  constructed 
what  is  at  this  time  considered  the  best  form  of  the  ba- 
rometer. 

In  1646,  Pascal,  the  young  philosopher  of  Clermont, 
repeated  these  experiments  at  Rouen,  before  more  than 
500  persons,  among  whom  were  five  or  six  Jesuits  of  the 
college,  and  he  obtained  precisely  the  same  results  as 
Torricelli,  with  whose  explanation,  however,  he  did  not 
become  acquainted  until  the  following  year,  when,  assum- 
ing that  the  mercury  in  the  Torricellian  tube  was  sus- 
pended by  the  weight  or  pressure  of  the  air,  he  sug- 
gested that  it  would  necessarily  fall  in  ascending  a  high 
mountain,  by  the  diminution  of  the  superincumbent  col- 
umn of  air.  At  his  request,  his  relative,  M.  Perier,  tried 
the  barometer  at  the  summit  and  the  base  of  the  mount- 
ain of  Puy,de  Dome,  in  Auvergne;  the  result  was,  that 
the  mercury,  which,  at  the  base,  stood  twenty-six  and  a 
quarter  inches  (French),  was  only  twenty-three  and  a 
sixth  inches  at  the  summit.  Pascal  afterward  found  the 
same  result  sensibly  shown  in  the  ascent  of  a  church 
tower  and  of  a  private  house. 

After  this  important  experiment  was  made,  Pascal  in- 
timated that  different  states  of  the  weather  would  occa- 


52  YOUTH    OF   PASCAL. 

sion  differences  in  the  barometer,  according  as  it  was  cold, 
hot,  dry,  or  moist ;  and  M.  Perier  tested  this  opinion  by 
observations  made  at  Clermont  from  1649  to  1651.  Cor- 
responding observations  were  made  at  the  same  time  at 
Paris  and  at  Stockholm ;  and  from  these  it  appeared  that 
the  mercury  rises  in  cold,  cloudy,  and  damp  weather,  and 
falls  when  the  weather  is  hot  and  dry,  and  during  rain 
and  snow ;  but  still  with  such  irregularities,  that  no  gen- 
eral rule  could  be  established.  At  Clermont,  the  differ- 
ence between  the  highest  and  lowest  state  of  the  mer- 
cury was  one  inch  three  and  a  half  lines ;  at  Paris,  the 
same ;  and  at  Stockholm,  two  inches  two  and  a  quarter 
lines. 

The  discovery  was,  however,  at  first  much  miscon- 
ceived, and  even  disputed,  till  the  question  was  finally 
decided  by  an  appeal  to  a  crucial  instance ;  one  of  the 
first,  if  not  the  very  first,  on  record  in  physics.  "  It  was 
then  seen,"  says  Sir  John  Herschel,  "  as  by  a  glaring 
instance,  that  the  maintenance  of  the  mercury  in  the 
tube  was.  the  effect  of  a  perfectly  definite  external  cause, 
while  its  fluctuations  from  day  to  day,  with  the  varying 
state  of  the  atmosphere,  strongly  corroborated  the  notion 
of  its  being  due  to  the  pressure  of  the  external  air  on  the 
surface  of  the  mercury  in  the  reservoir." 

The  truth  of  the  thing  is  just  this :  air,  though  com- 
paratively light,  is  positively  heavy,  having  a  weight  of 
its  own.  The  above  experiments  showed  that  a  square 
inch  of  it,  carried  up  from  the  surface  of  the  earth  to  the 
top  of  the  atmosphere,  is  no  less  than  fifteen  pounds  in 
weight.  It  is  this  weight  of  the  atmosphere,  fifteen 
pounds  on  every  square  inch,  that  pushes  water  into  the 
void  left  by  the  up-drawn  piston  of  a  pump ;  and  there 
is,  of  course,  a  limit  beyond  wThich  it  can  not  push  the 
water,  namely,  the  point  of  height  at  which  the  column 
of  water  in  the  pump-tube  is  exactly  balanced  by  the 
weight  of  the  atmosphere.  It  is  just  a  question  of  bal- 
ance :  fifteen  pounds  can  only  support  fifteen  pounds — a 
thing  which  every  body  now  understands,  thanks  to  Ga- 
lileo, Torricelli,  and  Blaise  Pascal,  the  seer,  the  discover- 
er, and  verifier  of  the  fact. 

Pascal  evinced  such  early  sagacity,  that,  at  the  age  of 
eleven,  he  was  ambitious  of  teaching  as  well  as  learning ; 


PASCAL   WEIGHS   THE    ATMOSPHERE.  53 

and  he  then  composed  a  little  treatise  on  the  refractions 
of  sounds  of  vibrating  bodies  when  touched  by  the  finger. 
One  day  he  was  found  alone  in  his  chamber  tracing  with 
charcoal  geometrical  figures  on  the  wall ;  and  on  another 
occasion  he  was  surprised  by  his  father  just  when  he  had 
succeeded  in  obtaining  a  demonstration  of  the  32d  prop- 
osition of  the  first  book  of  Euclid — that  the  three  angles 
of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two  right  angles.  Astonished 
and  overjoyed,  his  father  rushed  to  his  friend,  M.  Rail- 
leur,  to  announce  the  extraordinary  fact ;  and  the  young 
geometer  was  instantly  permitted  to  study,  unrestrained, 
the  Elements  of  Euclid,  of  which  he  soon  made  himself 
master  without  any  extrinsic  aid.  From  the  geometry 
of  planes  and  solids  he  passed  to  the  higher  branches  of 
the  science;  and  before  he  was  sixteen  years  of  age  he 
composed  a  treatise  on  the  Conic  Sections,  which  evinced 
the  most  extraordinary  sagacity.  When  scarcely  nine- 
teen years  of  age,  too,  Pascal  contrived  a  machine  to  as- 
sist his  father  in  making  the  numerical  calculations  which 
his  official  duties  in  Upper  Normandy  required. 

In  later  life,  Pascal  found,  researches  in  geometry  an 
occupation  well  fitted  to  give  serenity  to  a  heart  bleed- 
ing from  the  wounds  of  his  beloved  associates.  He  had 
for  some  time  renounced  the  study  of  the  sciences,  when, 
during  a  violent  attack  of  toothache,  which  deprived  him 
of  sleep,  the  subject  of  the  cycloid  forced  itself  upon  his 
thoughts.  Fermal,  Roberval,  and  others,  had  trodden 
the  same  ground  before  him ;  but  in  less  than  eight 
days,  and  under  severe  suffering,  he  discovered  a  gen- 
eral method  of  solving  this  class  of  problems  by  the  sum- 
mation of  certain  series ;  and  as  there  was  only  one  step 
from  this  discovery  to  that  of  Fluxions,  Pascal  might, 
with  more  leisure  and  better  health,  have  won  from  New- 
ton and  from  Leibnitz  the  glory  of  that  great  invention. 

Pascal's  treatise  on  the  weight  of  the  whole  mass  of 
air  forms  the  basis  of  the  modern  science  of  Pneumatics. 
In  order  to  prove  that  the  mass  of  air  presses  by  its 
wejght  on  all  the  bodies  which  it  surrounds,  and  also  that 
it  is  elastic  and  compressible,  Pascal  carried  a  balloon 
half  filled  with  air  to  the  top  of  the  Puy  de  Dome.  It 
gradually  inflated  itself  as  it  ascended ;  and  when  it 
reached  the  summit  it  was  quite  full  and  swollen,  as  if 


54  PASCAL    WEIGHS   THE   ATMOSPHERE. 

fresh  air  had  been  blown  into  it,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  it  swelled  in  proportion  as  the  weight  of  the  col- 
umn of  air  which  pressed  upon  it  was  diminished.  When 
again  brought  down,  it  became  more  and  more  flaccid ; 
and  when  it  reached  the  bottom,  it  resumed  its  original 
condition.  In  the  above  treatise,  Pascal  shows  that  all 
the  phenomena  and  effects  hitherto  ascribed  to  the  hor- 
ror of  a  vacuum  arise  from  the  weight  of  a  mass  of  air ; 
and — after  explaining  the  variable  pressure  of  the  atmos- 
phere in  different  localities  and  in  its  different  states,  and 
the  rise  of  water  in  pumps — he  calculates  that  the  whole 
mass  of  air  round  our  globe  weighs  8,983,889,440,000,- 
000,000  French  pounds. 

Seeing  that  little  more  than  two  centuries  have  elapsed 
since  the  exposition  of  this  great  principle  of  Hydrostat- 
ics was  clearly  established,  we  are  not  surprised  to  find 
that  the  science  in  the  Dark  Ages  enabled  the  ancient 
magicians  to  impose  upon  their  dupes  with  unimpeach- 
able certainty.  To  name  a  few  of  the  most  celebrated 
instances :  the  magic  cup  of  Tantalus,  which  he  could 
never  drink  though  the  beverage  rose  to  his  lips;  the 
fountain  in  the  island  of  Andros,  which  discharged  wine 
for  seven  days,  and  water  for  the  rest  of  the  year ;  the 
fountain  of  oil,  which  burnt  out  to  welcome  the  return 
of  Augustus  from  the  Sicilian  war ;  the  empty  urns,  which, 
at  the  annual  feast  of  Bacchus,  filled  themselves  with  wine, 
to  the  astonishment  of  the  assembled  strangers ;  the 
glass  tomb  of  Belus,  which,  after  being  emptied  by 
Xerxes,  could  never  again  be  filled  ;  the  weeping  statues 
of  the  ancients,  and  the  weeping  virgin  of  modern  times, 
whose  tears  were  uncourteously  stopped  by  Peter  the 
Great  when  he  discovered  the  trick ;  and  the  perpetual 
lamps  of  the  ancient  temples,  were  all  the  obvious  effects 
of  hydrostatical  pressure. 


THE  AIE-PUMP  AND  THE  AIR-GUN. 

IMMEDIATELY  after  the  discovery  of  the  principle  of 
the  Barometer  by  Torricelli,  in  the  pressure  of  the  air  on 
the  general  surface,  followed  that  of  Otto  von  Guericke, 
whose  aim  seems  to  have  been  to  decide  the  question 
whether  a  vacuum  could  or  could  not  exist,  by  endeavor- 
ing to  make  one.*  The  first  Air-pump  constructed  by 
Guericke  was  exhibited  by  him  at  the  Imperial  Diet  of 
Ratisbon  in  1654.  It  was  an  exhausting  syringe,  attach- 
ed underneath  a  spherical  glass  receiver,  and  worked 
somewhat  like  a  common  pump.  The  syringe  was  en- 
tirely immersed  in  water,  to  render  it  air-tight.  The  im- 
perfection of  his  mechanism,  however,  enabled  Guericke 
only  to  diminish  the  aerial  contents  of  his  receiver,  not 
entirely  to  empty  them ;  but  the  curious  effects  produced 
by  even  a  partial  exhaustion  of  air  speedily  excited  at- 
tention, and  induced  our  illustrious  countryman,  Robert 
Boyle,  to  construct  an  air-pump,  in  which  the  syringe 
was  so  far  improved  that  the.  water  could  be  dispensed 
with :  he  also  first  applied  rack-work  to  the  syringe.  In 
the  Journals  of  the  Royal  Society,  January  2d,  1660,  we 
find  Boyle's  Air-pump  referred  to  as  his  Cylinder,  and 
"  that  Mr.  Boyle  be  desired  to  show  his  Experiments  of 
the  Air,"  which  are  printed  in  the  Society's  Transac- 

*  This  ingenious  and  ardent  cultivator  of  science,  who  was  born  at 
Magdeburg,  in  Saxony,  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  in 
his  original  attempts  to  produce  a  vacuum,  used  first  to  fill  his  vessel 
with  water,  which  he  then  sucked  out  by  a  common  pump,  taking 
care,  of  course,  that  no  air  entered  to  replace  the  liquid.  It  was  by 
first  filling  it  with  water  that  Guericke  expelled  the  air  from  the  cop- 
per globe,  the  two  closely  fitting  hemispheres  comprising  which  six 
horses  were  then  unable  to  pull  asunder,  although  held  together  by 
nothing  more  than  the  pressure  of  the  external  atmosphere.  This 
curious  proof  of  the  force  or  weight  of  the  air,  which  was  exhibited 
before  the  Emperor  Ferdinand  III.  in  1634-,  is  commonly  referred  to 
by  the  name  of  the  experiment  of  the  Magdeburg  Hemispheres.  Gue- 
ricke, however,  afterward  adopted  the  method  of  exhausting  a  vessel 
of  its  contained  air  by  the  air-pump. 


56  EFFECTS    OF   THE   AIR-PUMP. 

tions.  The  Air-pump  constructed  by  Boyle  was  pre- 
sented to  the  Society  by  him  in  1662,  and  it  is  now  in 
the  museum  at  Burlington  House :  the  pump  consists  of 
two  barrels. 

We  have  the  testimony  of  a  French  savant  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  M.  Sibes,  that  the  Air-pump  in  Boyle's 
hands  became  a  new  machine ;  and  Professor  Baden 
Powell  considers  that  "  he  reduced  it  nearly  to  its  pres- 
ent construction."  It  is  true  that  the  second  syringe  and 
the  barometer  gauge  were  afterward  added  by  Hawksbee, 
and  several  minor  'improvements  were  made  by  Hooke, 
Mariotte,  Gravesande,  and  Smeaton.  All  the  alterations 
which  have  been  made  since  the  time  of  the  invention, 
however  important,  relate  to  the  mechanism  only,  and 
not  to  the  principle  on  which  the  pump  acts. 

Dr.  Hutton  has  grouped  these  effects  and  phenomena 
of  the  Air-pump.  In  the  exhausted  receiver,  heavy  and 
light  bodies  fall  equally  swiftly :  so  a  guinea  and  a  feath- 
er fall  from  the  top  of  a  tall  receiver  to  the  bottom 
exactly  together.  Most  animals  die  in  a  minute  or  two  : 
however,  vipers  and  frogs,  although  they  swell  much, 
live  an  hour  or  two,  and,  after  being  seemingly  quite 
dead,  revive  in  the  open  air.  Snails  survive  about  ten 
hours ;  efts,  two  or  three  days ;  leeches,  five  or  six. 
Oysters  live  for  twenty-four  hours.  The  heart  of  an  eel, 
taken  out  of  the  body,  continues  to  beat  for  great  part 
of  an  hour,  and  that  more  briskly  than  in  the  air.  Warm 
blood,  milk,  gall,  etc.,  undergo  a  considerable  internes- 
cence  and  ebullition.  Eggs  of  silkworms  hatch  in  vacua. 
Vegetation  stops.  Fire  is  extinguished ;  the  flame  of  a 
candle  usually  going  out  in  one  minute,  and  charcoal  in 
about  five  minutes.  Red-hot  iron  seems,  however,  not 
to  be  affected;  sulphur  and  gunpowder  are  not  lighted 
by  it,  only  fused.  A  match,  after  lying  seemingly  ex- 
tinct for  a  long  while,  revives  on  readmitting  the  air.  A 
flint  and  steel  strike  sparks  of  fire  as  copiously  as  in  air. 
Magnets  and  magnetized  needles  act  as  in  air.  Heat 
may  be  produced  by  attrition.  Camphor  will  not  take 
fire ;  and  gunpowder,  though  some  of  the  grains  of  a 
heap  of  it  be  kindled  by  a  burning-glass,  will  not  give 
fire  to  the  contiguous  grains.  Glowworms  lose  their 
light  in  proportion  as  the  air  is  exhausted  ;  but,  on  read- 


THEORY    OF   THE    AIR-GUN.  57 

mitting  the  air,  they  presently  recover.  A  bell,  on  being 
struck,  is  not  heard  to  ring,  or  very  faintly.  Water 
freezes.  A  syphon  will  not  run ;  and  electricity  appears 
like  the  Aurora  Borealis. 

De  la  Croix  relates  the  following  instance  of  sagacity 
in  a  cat,  who,  even  under  the  receiver  of  an  Air-pump, 
discovered  the  means  of  escaping  a  death  which  appeared 
to  all  present  inevitable.  "  I  once  saw,"  he  relates,  "  a 
lecturer  upon  experimental  philosophy  place  a  cat  under 
the  glass  receiver  of  an  Air-pump  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
monstrating that  life  can  not  be  supported  without  air 
and  respiration.  The  lecturer  had  already  made  several 
strokes  with  the  piston  in  order  to  exhaust  the  receiver 
of  its  air,  when  the  cat,  who  began  to  feel  herself  very 
uncomfortable  in  the  rarefied  atmosphere,  was  fortunate 
enough  to  discover  the  source  from  whence  her  uneasi- 
ness proceeded.  She  placed  her  paw  upon  the  hole 
through  which  the  air  escaped,  and  thus  prevented  any 
more  from  passing  out  of  the  receiver.  All  the  exertions 
of  the  philosopher  were  now  unavailing  :  in  vain  he  drew 
the  piston ;  the  cat's,  paw  effectually  prevented  its  opera- 
tion. Hoping  to  effect  his  purpose,  he  again  let  air  into 
the  receiver,  which  as  soon  as  the  cat  perceived,  she 
withdrew  her  paw  from  the  aperture ;  but  whenever  he 
attempted  to  exhaust  the  receiver,  she  applied  her  paw 
as  before.  The  spectators  clapped  their  hands  in  ad- 
miration of  the  cat's  sagacity  ;  and  the  lecturer  was  com- 
pelled to  remove  her,  and  substitute  another  cat  that 
possessed  less  penetration  for  the  cruel  experiment." 

Although  the  Air-pump  is  scarcely  two  centuries  old, 
yet  the  Air-gun,  which  is  so  nearly  allied  to  it  in  the  con- 
struction of  its  valve  and  condensing  syringe,  existed 
long  antecedent  to  it ;  for  it  is  recorded  that  an  Air-gun 
was  made  for  Henry  IV.,  by  Marim,  of  Lisseau,  in  Nor- 
mandy, as  early  as  1408 ;  and  another  was  preserved  in 
the  armory  at  Schmetau,  bearing  the  date  of  1474.  The 
Air-gun  of  the  present  day  is  different.  Bishop  Wilkins 
mentions  "  the  Wind  Gun"  as  a  late  ingenious  invention, 
which  discharges  with  force  "  almost  equal  to  our  pow- 
der guns." 

Professor  Helmholtz,  one  of  the  latest  illustrators  of 
this  instrument,  thus  lucidly  explains  its  theory :  "  Into 
C  2 


58  THEOEY    OF   THE   AIR-GUN. 

the  chamber  of  an  Air-gun  we  squeeze,  by  means  of  a 
condensing  air-pump,  a  great  quantity  of  air.  When  we 
afterward  open  the  cock  of  the  gun,  and  admit  the  com- 
pressed air  into  the  barrel,  the  ball  is  driven  out  of  the 
latter  with  a  force  similar  to  that  exerted  by  ignited 
powder.  Now  we  may  determine  the  work  consumed 
in  the  pumping-in  of  the  air,  and  the  living  force  which, 
upon  firing,  is  communicated  to  the  ball,  but  we  shall 
never  find  the  latter  greater  than  the  former.  The  com- 
pressed air  has  generated  no  working  force,  but  simply 
gives  to  the  bullet  that  which  has  been  previously  com- 
municated to  it.  And  while  we  have  pumped  for  per- 
haps a  quarter  of  an  hour  to  charge  the  gun,  the  force  is 
expended  in  a  few  seconds  when  the  bullet  is  discharged  ; 
but,  because  the  action  is  compressed  into  so  short  a 
time,  a  much  greater  velocity  is  imparted  to  the  ball 
than  would  be  possible  to  communicate  to  it  by  the  un- 
aided effort  of  the  arm  in  throwing  it." 

We  may  here  relate  a  curious  wager  which  Sir  Robert 
Moray,  at  the  request  of  Charles  II.,  brought  forward  at 
a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1671.  It  was,  that 
the  king  wagered  £50  to  £5  "  for  the  compression  of  air 
by  water."  It  was  accordingly  resolved  that  Mr.  Hooke 
should  prepare  the  necessary  apparatus  for  the  experi- 
ment, which  Sir  Robert  Moray  said  "  might  be  done  by 
a  cane,  so  contrived  that  it  should  take  in  more  and 
more  water,  according  as  it  should  be  sunk  deeper  and 
deeper  into  it."  The  minutes  of  a  subsequent  meeting 
record  the  successful  performance  of  the  experiment, 
and  that  it  "was  acknowledged  his  majesty  had  won 
the  wager." 


LIVING  UNDER  WATER:  THE  DIVING- 
BELL. 


we  consider  the  vast  amount  of  treasure  which 
has  been  from  time  to  time  lost  in  the  depths  of  the  sea, 
we  shall  not  be  surprised  at  the  variety  of  the  means 
which  have  been  devised  for  the  recovery  of  the  hidden 
wealth.  The  principal  of  these  contrivances  is  the  Div- 
ing-bell, with  the  operations  of  which  the  public  have  be- 
come familiar  by  the  exhibition  of  an  improved  bell  at 
our  Polytechnic  Institution  ;*  but  the  history  of  the  in- 
vention, as  well  as  the  primitive  means  by  which  it  was 
preceded,  present  many  interesting  instances  of  ingenu- 
ity directed  to  humane  and  praiseworthy  purposes. 

In  remote  ages  (says  Professor  Beckmann)  divers  were 
kept  in  ships  to  assist  in  raising  anchors,  and  goods  thrown 
overboard  in  times  of  danger  ;  and,  by  the  laws  of  the 
Rhodians,  they  were  allowed  a  share  of  the  wreck  pro- 
portioned to  the  depth  in  which  they  had  gone  in  search 
of  it.  In  war,  they  were  often  employed  to  destroy  the 
works  and  ships  of  the  enemy  ;  divers  also  fished  for 

*  For  twenty  years  (1839-1859)  there  was  exhibited  at  the  Poly- 
technic Institution,  No.  300  llegent  Street,  London,  a  diving-bell, 
which  was  put  in  operation  daily.  This  bell  was  manufactured  by 
Cottam  and  Hallen,  and  cost  about  £400.  It  is  of  cast  iron,  and 
weighs  3  tons  ;  5  feet  in  height,  and  4  feet  8  inches  in  diameter  at  the 
mouth.  Within  is  affixed  a  knocker,  under  which  is  painted  : 
"  More  air,  knock  once; 

Less  air,  knock  twice  ; 

Pull  up,  knock  three  times." 

The  bell  is  about  one  third  open  at  the  bottom,  has  a  seat  all  round 
for  the  divers,  is  lit  by  twelve  openings  of  thick  plate  glass.  It  is  sus- 
pended by  a  massive  chain  to  a  large  swing-crane,  with  a  powerful 
crab,  the  chain  having  compensation  weights,  and  working  into  a  well 
beneath.  The  air  was  supplied  from  two  powerful  air-pumps,  of  eight- 
inch  cylinder,  conveyed  by  the  leather  hose  to  any  depth  ;  the  divers 
being  seated  in  the  bell,  it  was  moved  over  the  water,  and  directly  let 
down  within  two  feet  of  the  bottom  of  the  tank,  and  then  drawn  up, 
the  whole  occupying  only  two  minutes  and  a  half.  The  tank  and  the 
adjoining  canals  held  10,000  gallons  of  water.  Each  person  descend- 
ing in  the  bell  paid  Is.  ;  and  it  has  produced  £1000  in  one  year. 


60  LIVING    UNDER   WATER. 

pearls.  The  statements  of  their  remaining  under  water 
unassisted  by  apparatus  for  procuring  air  are,  however, 
greatly  exaggerated ;  they  speak  of  six  hours,  whereas 
six  minutes  is  the  longest  time  of  submersion  recorded 
in  modern  times. 

Dr.  Halley,  in  a  paper  in  the  Philosophical  Transac- 
tions on  "  the  Art  of  living  under  Water,"  describes  the 
divers  for  sponges  in  the  Archipelago  taking  down  in 
their  mouths  a  piece  of  sponge  soaked  in  oil,  by  which 
they  were  enabled  to  dive  for  a  longer  period  than  with- 
out it.  As  the  bulk  of  the  sponge  must  diminish  the 
quantity  of  air  which  the  diver  could  contain  in  his 
mouth,  it  does  not  appear  probable  that  this  practice 
could  assist  respiration. 

In  connection  with  diving  by  the  unassisted  powers  of 
the  body,  Professor  Faraday  relates  this  curious  fact : 
The  lungs  are,  in  their  natural  state,  charged  with  a 
large  quantity  of  impure  air ;  this  being  a  portion  of  the 
carbonic  acid  gas  which  is  formed  during  respiration,  but 
which,  after  such  expiration,  remains  lodged  in  the  in- 
volved passages  of  the  pulmonary  vessels.  By  breathing 
hard  for  a  short  time,  as  a  person  does  after  violent  ex- 
ercise, this  impure  air  is  expelled,  and  its  place  is  suppli- 
ed by  pure  atmospheric  air,  by  which  a  person  will  be 
enabled  to  hold  his  breath  much  longer  than  without 
such  precaution.  Dr.  Faraday  states  that,  although  he 
could  only  hold  his  breath,  after  breathing  in  the  ordi- 
nary way,  for  about  three  quarters  of  a  minute,  and  that 
with  great  difficulty,  he  felt  no  inconvenience,  after  mak- 
ing eight  or  ten  forced  respirations  to  clear  the  lungs,  un- 
til the  mouth  and  nostrils  had  been  closed  more  than  a 
minute  and  a  half;  and  that  he  continued  to  hold  breath 
to  the  end  of  the  second  minute.  A  knowledge  of  this 
fact  may  enable  a  diver  to  remain  under  water  at  least 
twice  as  long  as  he  otherwise  could  do.  Possibly  the  ex- 
ertion of  swimming  may  have  the  effect  of  clearing  the 
lungs,  so  that  persons  accustomed  to  diving  may  uncon- 
sciously avail  themselves  of  this  preparatory  measure. 

The  advantage  of  breathing  condensed  air,  and  there- 
by obtaining  a  larger  supply  of  oxygen  in  the  same  bulk 
than  with  air  of  the  ordinary  pressure,  is  shown  also  in 
the  following  fact :  After  one  of  the  disastrous  occur- 


THE    EARLIEST    DIVING-BELL.  61 

rences  at  the  works  of  the  Thames  Tunnel,  Mr.  Brunei, 
the  engineer,  descended  in  a  diving-bell  to  examine  the 
breach  made  by  the  irruption  of  the  river  into  the  tun- 
nel. The  bell  was  lowered  to  the  mouth  of  the  opening, 
a  depth  of  about  thirty  feet ;  but  the  breach  was  too  nar- 
row to  allow  it  to  go  lower,  in  order  that  the  shield  and 
other  works,  which  lay  eight  or  ten  feet  deeper,  might 
be  examined  from  the  bell.  Mr.  Brunei  therefore  took 
hold  of  the  rope,  and  dived  below  the  bell  for  the  pur- 
pose. After  he  had  remained  under  water  about  two 
minutes,  his  companion  in  the  bell  became  alarmed,  and 
gave  a  signal  which  caused  Brunei  to  rise.  On  doing  so, 
he  was  surprised  to  find  how  much  time  had  elapsed ; 
and,  on  repeating  the  experiment,  he  ascertained  that  he 
could  with  ease  remain  fully  two  minutes  under  water,  a 
circumstance  accounted  for  by  the  condensation  of  the 
air  in  the  bell,  from  which  his  lungs  were  supplied,  by  the 
pressure  of  a  column  of  water  nearly  thirty  feet  high, 
which  would  condense  the  air  into  little  more  than  one 
half  of  its  usual  bulk. 

Plans  for  enabling  persons  to  remain  for  a  longer  pe- 
riod under  water  than  is  possible  by  the  natural  powers 
of  the  body  are  of  very  old  date.  Aristotle  is  supposed 
to  intimate  that  in  his  time  divers  used  a  kind  of  kettle 
to  enable  them  to  continue  longer  under  water ;  but  this 
interpretation  is  disputed.  Beckmann  states  that  the 
oldest  information  we  have  respecting  the  use  of  the  Div- 
ing-bell in  Europe  is  that  of  John  Taisnier,  quoted  in 
Schott's  Technica  Curiosa,  Nuremberg,  1664,  in  which 
'Taisnier  relates :  "  Were  the  ignorant  vulgar  told  that 
one  could  descend  to  the  bottom  of  the  Rhine,  in  the 
midst  of  the  water,  without  wetting  one's  clothes,  or  any 
part  of  one's  body,  and  even  carry  a  lighted  candle  to 
the  bottom  of  the  water,  they  would  consider  it  altogeth- 
er as  ridiculous  and  impossible.  This,  however,  I  saw 
done  at  Toledo  in  Spain,  in  the  year  1538,  before  the  Em- 
peror Charles  V.  and  almost  ten  thousand  spectators. 
The  experiment  was  made  by  two  Greeks,  who,  taking  a 
very  large  kettle  suspended  by  ropes  with  the  mouth 
downward,  fixed  beams  and  planks  in  the  middle  of  its 
concavity,  upon  which  they  placed  themselves,  together 
with  a  candle.  The  kettle  was  equipoised  by  means  of 


62  DIVING-BELLS. 

lead  fixed  round  its  mouth,  so  that,  when  let  down  to- 
ward the  water,  no  part  of  its  circumference  should  touch 
the  water  sooner  than  another,  else  the  water  might  eas- 
ily have  overcome  the  air  included  in  it,  and  have  con- 
verted it  into  moist  vapor ;  but  if  the  vessel  were  gently 
drawn  up,  the  men  continue  dry,  and  the  candle  is  found 
burning."  Schott  calls  the  machine  "  an  aquatic  kettle ;" 
he  also  describes  "  an  aquatic  armor,"  which  would  ena- 
ble those  who  were  covered  with  it  to  walk  under  wa- 
ter ;  and  the  former  apparatus  is  represented,  showing  a 
man  walking  into  the  water  with  a  covering  like  a  small 
diving-bell  over  his  head,  descending  nearly  to  his  feet. 

In  England,  besides  the  supposed  contrivance  of  a  Div- 
ing-machine by  Roger  Bacon,  it  is  evident  that  the  Div- 
ing-bell was  known  at  a  very  early  period.  It  is  de- 
scribed more  than  once  in  the  works  of  Lord  Bacon  as  a 
machine  used  to  assist  persons  laboring  under  water  upon 
wrecks,  by  affording  a  reservoir  of  air  to  which  they 
might  resort  whenever  they  required  to  take  breath.  "A 
hollow  vessel  was  made  of  metal,  which  was  let  down 
equally  to  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  thus  carried  with 
it  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea  the  whole  air  it  contained.  It 
stood  upon  three  feet  like  a  tripod,  which  were  in  length 
somewhat  less  than  the  height  of  a  man,  so  that  the  div- 
er, when  he  was  no  longer  able  to  contain  his  breath, 
could  put  his  head  into  the  vessel,  and,  having  breathed, 
return  again  to  his  work"  (Novum  Organwn,  lib.  ii.,  p. 
850). 

The  next  use  of  the  bell  occurred  in  America,  where, 
in  1642,  it  was  used  by  one  Edward  Bedall,  of  Boston, 
to  weigh  the  Mary  Rose,  which  had  sunk  the  previous 
year.  Bedall  made  use  of  two  tubs,  "  upon  which  were 
hanged  so  many  weights  (600  Ibs.)  as  would  sink  them 
to  the  ground."  The  experiment  succeeded,  and  the 
guns,  ballast,  goods,  hull,  etc.,  were  all  transported  into 
shoal  water,  and  recovered. 

Some  curious  information  on  submarine  operations  was 
published  in  1688  by  Professor  Sinclair,  of  Glasgow,  show- 
ing how  "  to  buoy  up  a  ship  of  any  burden  from  the 
ground  of  the  sea ;"  and  stating  that  the  late  Marquis  of 
Argyle,  "  having  obtained  a  patent  of  the  king  on  one  of 
the  Spanish  Armada,  which  was  sunk  near  the  Isle  of 


PHIPPS'S    DIVING-BELL.  63 

Mull,  anno  1588,  employed  James  Colquhoun,  of  Glas- 
gow," who,  "  not  knowing  the  Diving-bell,  went  down 
several  times,  the  air  from  above  being  communicated  to 
his  lungs  by  a  long  pipe  of  leather."  The  Armada  ships 
sunk  near  Mull,  according  to  the  accounts  of  the  Span- 
ish prisoners,  contained  great  riches ;  and  this  informa- 
tion excited  from  time  to  time  the  avarice  of  speculators, 
and  gave  rise  to  several  attempts  to  procure  part  of  the 
lost  treasure.  About  1664,  an  ingenious  gentleman,  the 
Laird  of  Melgim, "  went  down  with  a  Diving-bell,  and  got 
up  three  guns."  Sinclair  also  proposed  to  raise  wrecks 
by  the  buoyancy  of  arks  or  boxes,  open  at  the  bottom, 
which  were  to  be  sunk  full  of  water,  and  then  filled  with 
air,  either  by  sending  down  casks  of  air,  by  bellows  and 
a  long  tube,  or  otherwise.  He  alludes  to  the  occasional 
use  of  casks  for  the  purpose  of  raising  vessels,  and  ex- 
plains why,  when  at  a  great  depth,  they  are  liable  to  be 
crushed  by  the  pressure  of  the  water ;  showing  that,  by 
allowing  the  water  to  enter  by  a  hole  in  the  lower  part 
of  the  cask,  it  would  so  compress  the  air  as  to  produce 
an  equilibrium  of  pressure,  and  thereby  preserve  it  from 
fracture. 

About  twenty  years  after  this, William  Phipps,  the  son 
of  a  blacksmith  of  Pemaquid,  in  the  United  States,  and 
who  had  been  brought  up  as  a  ship-carpenter  at  Boston, 
formed  a  project  for  searching  and  unloading  a  rich  Span- 
ish wreck  near  the  Bahamas,  when  Charles  II.  gave  him 
a  frigate  to  obtain  the  treasure.  He  sailed  in  1683  ;  but, 
being  unsuccessful,  returned  in  great  poverty,  though 
with  a  firm  conviction  of  the  practicability  of  his  scheme. 
He  then  endeavored  to  procure  a  vessel  from  James  II., 
failing  in  which  he  opened  a  subscription.  At  first  he 
was  laughed  at;  but  at  length  the  Duke  of  Albemarle, 
son  of  the  celebrated  General  Monk,  advanced  Phipps  a 
considerable  sum  toward  the  second  outfit ;  and  having 
collected  the  remainder,  he  set  sail  in  1687,  in  a  ship  of 
200  tons  burden,  and  reaching  the  wreck,  when  nearly 
worn  out  with  fruitless  labor  he  brought  up,  from  six 
and  seven  fathoms  depth,  treasure  of  £300,000,  of  which 
Phipps  received  for  his  share  £16,000,  the  Duke  of  Albe- 
marle £90,000,  and  the  subscribers  received  the  remain- 
der. Some  envious  persons  then  endeavored  to  persuade 


64  DIVING    APPARATUS. 

the  king  to  seize  both  the  ship  and  the  cargo,  under  a 
pretense  that  Phipps,  when  he  solicited  his  majesty's  per- 
mission, had  not  given  accurate  information  respecting 
the  business ;  but  James  nobly  replied  that  he  knew 
Phipps  to  be  an  honest  man,  and  that  he  and  his  friends 
should  share  the  treasure  among  them :  the  king  after- 
ward knighted  Phipps,  who  had  previously  been  made 
High  Sheriff  of  New  England.  In  1691  he  was  made 
governor  of  his  native  colony.  He  was  uneducated,  and 
knew  not  how  to  read  or  write  until  he  had  grown  to 
manhood ;  but,  by  strong  native  abilities  and  restless  en- 
terprise, he  rose  to  distinction.  He  is  erroneously  said 
to  have  been  the  founder  of  the  Mulgrave  family,  of 
which  the  present  head  is  the  Marquis  of  ISTormanby; 
which  mistake  has,  doubtless,  arisen  from  one  of  the  ear- 
ly members  of  that  family,  Captain  Constantine  John 
Phipps,  commander  of  the  unsuccessful  Arctic  Expedi- 
tion in  1773,  having  been  raised  to  the  British  Peerage 
as  Baron  Mulgrave,  of  Mulgrave,  co.  York,  in  1790. 

Among  the  oldest  representations  of  Diving  apparatus, 
Beckmann  mentions  a  print  in  editions  of  Vegetius  on 
War,  published  in  1511  and  1532,  representing  a  diver 
with  a  cap,  from  which  rises  a  long  leathern  pipe,  term- 
inating in  an  opening  which  floats  upon  the  surface  of 
the  water.  Beckmann  also  names  a  figure,  in  Lorini's 
work  on  Fortification,  1607,  which  nearly  resembles  the 
modern  Diving-bell,  and  consists  of  a  square  box,  bound 
with  iron,  which  is  furnished  with  windows,  and  a  seat 
for  the  diver.  Lorini,  who  was  an  Italian,  does  not  lay 
claim  to  the  invention  of  this  apparatus. 

In  1617,  Francis  Kessler  described  his  Water-armor, 
intended  for  diving,  but  which  Beckmann  states  to  have 
been  useless.  In  1 6  7 1 ,  Witsen  taught,  better  than  any  of 
his  predecessors,  the  construction  and  use  of  the  Diving- 
bell,  which,  however,  he  erroneously  says  was  invented 
at  Amsterdam.  About  1679,  Borelli,  the  celebrated  phy- 
sician of  Naples,  invented  an  apparatus  by  which  per- 
sons might  go  a  considerable  depth  under  water,  remain 
there,  move  from  place  to  place,  and  sink  or  rise  at  pleas- 
ure ;  and  also  a  boat  in  which  two  or  more  persons  might 
row  themselves  under  water ;  but  the  practicability  of 
these  machines  has  been  much  controverted. 


THE    DIVING-BELL.  65 

Dr.  Halley,  in  the  paper  in  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions already  quoted,  describes  the  defects  of  the 
Diving-bell  as  previously  -used,  and  suggests  a  remedy 
for  them.  This  paper  alone  would  be  sufficient,  although 
it  does  not  enter  into  the  early  history  of  the  machine, 
to  contradict  the  erroneous  statement  which  has  been 
made,  that  Halley  was  the  inventor  of  the  Diving-bell. 

In  its  simplest  form,  the  Diving-bell  is  a  strong,  heavy 
vessel  of  wood  or  metal,  made  perfectly  air  and  water- 
tight at  the  top  and  sides,  but  open  at  the  bottom.  If 
such  a  vessel  be  gradually  lowered  into  the  water  in  a 
perfectly  horizontal  position,  the  air  which  it  contains 
can  not  escape,  and  therefore  the  vessel  can  not  become 
full  of  water.  This  may  be  readily  illustrated  by  plung- 
ing a  glass  tumbler  in  an  inverted  position  into  a  vessel 
of  water,  and  placing  a  bit  of  cork  under  the  glass.  If 
a  bit  of  burning  matter  be  laid  upon  the  cork  float,  it  will 
continue  to  burn,  although  the  glass  and  all  that  it  con- 
tains be  plunged  far  beneath  the  water,  thereby  proving 
that  the  upper  part  of  the  cavity  of  the  glass  is  occupied 
by  air,  and  not  by  water.  In  this  experiment,  however, 
it  will  be  observed  that  the  water  does  fill  a  small  part 
of  the  cavity  of  the  glass,  and  that  it  rises  more  into  it 
when  it  is  plunged  to  a  considerable  depth  than  when 
the  rim  is  onjy  just  immersed  beneath  the  surface.  This 
is  occasioned  by  the  condensation  of  the  air  contained  in 
the  glass,  which,  being  very  elastic  and  compressible,  is 
condensed  into  a  smaller  space  than  it  would  occupy 
under  the  ordinary  pressure  of  the  atmosphere. 

We  have  now  illustrated  the  principle  of  the  Diving- 
bell  :  let  us  proceed  to  its  application.  When  the  bell  is 
used  for  descending  to  a  very  small  depth,  as  the  press- 
ure of  the  water  is  small,  it  will  not  rise  in  the  bell  to  a 
sufficient  height  to  be  inconvenient ;  but  at  the  depth  of 
thirty  feet  the  pressure  is  so  great  as  to  compress  the  air 
into  one  half  its  original  volume,  so  that  the  bell  will  be- 
come half  full  of  water;  and  at  a  greater  depth  the  air 
will  be  still  more  compressed,  and  the  water  will  rise  pro- 
portionally higher  in  the  bell.  This  condensation  of  the 
air  does  not  materially  interfere  with  respiration,  pro- 
vided the  descent  of  the  bell  be  very  gradual,  as  the  air 
then  insinuates  itself  into  the  cavities  of  the  body,  and 


66  THE    DIVING-BELL. 

balances  the  pressure  from  without.  The  principal  effect 
of  the  increased  pressure  is  a  pain  in  the  ears,  since  the 
Eustachian  tube  does  not  allow  the  condensed  air  imme- 
diately to  find  its  way  into  the  cavities  of  the  ear,  so  that 
the  pressure  on  the  outside  of  the  tympanum  is  for  a 
time  unbalanced  by  a  corresponding  pressure  from  with- 
in, and  occasions  a  sensation  like  that  of  having  quills 
thrust  into  the  ears.  This  continues  until  the  pressure 
of  the  air  in  the  mouth,  which  at  first  has  a  tendency  to 
keep  the  aperture  of  the  Eustachian  tube  closed,  forces 
it  open ;  an  action  which  is  accompanied  by  a  noise  like 
a  slight  explosion.  The  condensed  air  then  enters  the 
interior  cavities  of  the  ear,  and  by  restoring  the  equilib- 
rium of  pressure  on  each  side  the  tympanum,  removes 
the  pain,  which  will  return,  and  be  remedied  in  the  same 
manner,  if  the  bell  should  descend  to  a  greater  depth. 
But,  while  the  mere  condensation  of  the  air  in  the  bell 
does  not  render  it  unfit  for  respiration,  it  would  soon  be- 
come so  if  no  means  were  provided  for  renewing  it  from 
time  to  time,  as  it  becomes  vitiated  by  repeated  respira- 
tion. Dr.  Halley  provided  a  remedy  for  the  inconven- 
ience by  supplying  the  bell  with  fresh  air  without  raising 
it  to  the  surface.  The  air  was  conveyed  in  two  thirty- 
gallon  barrels,  weighted  with  lead  to  make  them  sink 
readily.  Each  had  an  open  bung-hole  in  the  lower  end, 
to  allow  water  to  enter  during  their  descent,  so  as  to 
condense  the  air.  There  was  also  a  hole  in  the  upper 
end  of  each  barrel,  to  which  was  fitted  an  air-tight  leath- 
ern hose.  These  air-barrels  were  attached  to  tackle,  by 
which  they  were  by  two  men  let  down  and  raised  altern- 
ately, like  two  buckets  in  a  well ;  and  by  lines  attached 
to  the  lower  edge  of  the  bell,  they  were  so  guided  in 
their  descent  that  the  mouth  of  the  hose  always  came 
directly  to  the  hand  of  a  man  who  stood  upon  the  stage 
suspended  from  the  bell.  As  the  apertures  of  the  hose 
were,  during  the  descent,  always  below  the  level  of  the 
barrels,  no  air  could  escape  from  them ;  and  when  they 
were  turned  up  by  the  attendant,  so  as  to  be  above  the 
level  of  the  water  in  the  barrels,  the  air  rushed  out  with 
great  force  into  the  bell,  the  barrels  becoming  at  the 
same  time  full  of  water. 

By  sending  down  the  air-barrels  in  rapid  succession, 


HALLEY'S  DIVING-BELL.  67 

the  air  was  kept  in  so  pure  a  state  that  Halley  and  four 
other  persons  remained  in  the  bell,  at  a  depth  of  nine  or 
ten  fathoms,  for  more  than  an  hour  and  a  half  at  a  time, 
without  injurious  consequences ;  and  Halley  states  that 
he  could  have  remained  there  as  long  as  he  pleased  for 
any  thing  that  appeared  to  the  contrary.  Halley  ob- 
served that  it  was  necessary  to  be  set  down  gradually  at 
first,  and  to  pause  at  about  the  depth  of  twelve  feet,  to 
drive  out,  by  the  admission  of  a  supply  of  air,  the  water 
which  had  entered  the  bell.  When  the  Diving-bell  was 
at  the  required  depth,  he  let  out,  by  a  cock  in  the  top  of 
the  bell,  a  quantity  of  hot  impure  air  equal  to  the  quan- 
tity of  fresh  air  admitted  from  the  barrels.  This  foul  air 
rushed  up  from  the  valve  with  such  force  as  to  cover  the 
surface  of  the  sea  with  a  white  foam.  So  perfect  was  the 
action  of  this  apparatus  that  Halley  says  he  could,  be  re- 
moving the  hanging  stage,  lay  the  bottom  of  the  sea  so 
far  dry,  within  the  circuit  of  the  bell,  that  the  sand  or 
mud  did  not  rise  above  his  shoes.  Through  the  strong 
glass  window  in  the  top,  when  the  sea  was  clear,  and  es- 
pecially when  the  sun  shone,  sufficient  light  was  trans- 
mitted to  allow  a  person  in  the  bell  to  write  or  read ;  and 
when  the  sea  was  troubled  or  thick,  which  occasioned 
the  bell  to  be  as  dark  as  night,  a  candle  was  burnt  in  it. 
Halley  sometimes  sent  up  orders  with  the  empty  air-bar- 
rels, writing  them  with  an  iron  pen  on  plates  of  lead. 

Halley,  having  by  these  ingenious  contrivances  removed 
the  principal  difficulties  attending  the  use  of  the  diving- 
bell,  foresaw  its  extensive  application :  as  fishing  for  pearl, 
diving  for  coral,  sponges,  and  the  like,  in  far  greater 
depths  than  had  hitherto  been  thought  possible ;  also  for 
laying  the  foundations  of  moles,  bridges,  etc.,  upon  rocky 
bottoms ;  and  for  the  cleaning  and  scrubbing  of  ships' 
bottoms,  when  foul,  in  calm  weather  at  sea,  to  which  pur- 
poses the  Diving-bell  has,  since  the  date  of  Halley' s  paper 
(1717),  been  applied. 

The  next  improver  of  the  Diving-bell  was  Martin  Trie- 
wald,  "  captain  of  mechanics,  and  military  architect  to 
his  Swedish  majesty,"  who  had  the  sole  privilege  of  div- 
ing upon  the  coasts  of  the  Baltic  belonging  to  the  King 
of  Sweden.  His  bell  was  of  copper,  tinned  inside,  small- 
er than  that  of  Dr.  Halley,  and  managed  by  two  men.  A 


68  IMPROVED   DIVING-BELLS. 

stage  for  the  diver  to  stand  upon  was  suspended  at  such 
a  depth  below  it  that  the  man's  head  would  be  but  little 
above  the  level  of  the  water,  where  the  air  is  cooler  and 
fitter  for  respiration  than  in  the  upper  part  of  the  bell ; 
and  a  spiral  tube  was  attached  to  the  inside  of  the  bell, 
with  a  wide  aperture  at  the  bottom,  and  a  flexible  tube 
and  mouth-piece  at  the  top,  so  that  when  the  diver  was 
up  in  the  bell  he  might  inhale  cool  air  from  the  lower 
part,  exhaling  the  foul  air  by  his  nostrils.  In  lieu  of  win- 
dows of  flat  glass,  Triewald  used  convex  lenses,  such  as 
are  employed  to  this  day,*  to  admit  light  to  the  bell. 

In  1775,  Mr.  Spalding,  a  grocer  of  Edinburgh,  made 
certain  improvements  upon  Halley's  bell,  in  recovering 
part  of  the  cargo  of  a  vessel  lost  on  the  Fern  Islands. 
Spalding's  bell  was  of  wood ;  and  to  sink  it  he  used,  in 
addition  to  the  weights  attached  to  the  rim,  a  large  bal- 
ance-weight suspended  by  a  rope  from  the  centre,  and 
which,  by  pulleys,  the  divers  employed  to  anchor  the  bell 
at  any  required  level ;  and  by  hauling  in  the  rope  while 
the  weight  was  at  the  bottom,  the  persons  in  the  bell 
might  lower  themselves  at  pleasure.  Another  improve- 
ment was  a  horizontal  partition  near  the  top  of  the  bell, 
which  divided  off  a  chamber,  with  valves,  to  be  filled 
either  with  water  or  with  air  from  the  lower  part  of  the 
bell,  so  as  to  alter  the  specific  gravity  of  the  whole  ma- 
chine, and  thereby  cause  it  to  ascend  or  descend  at  pleas- 
ure. This  bell  also  had  an  air  apparatus  like  Halley's ; 
ropes  were  used  instead  of  seats  in  the  bell,  so  that  the 
divers  could  raise  themselves  to  the  surface  unassisted 
from  above ;  the  bell  could  be  removed  at  will  from  the 
point  at  which  it  descended,  and  a  long-boat  carried  the 
signal-lines  and  the  tackle  for  working  the  air  barrels. 
Mr.  John  Farey,  jr.,  has  improved  upon  Spalding's  appa- 

*  These  convex  glasses  have  been  known  to  produce  extraordinary 
effects.  Thus,  in  1828,  Mr.  Mackintosh,  contractor  for  the  govern- 
ment works  at  Stonehouse  Point,  Devon,  had  to  descend  in  the  Diving- 
bell  with  workmen  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  sea-wall.  The  bell  was 
fitted  with  convex  glasses  in  the  upper  part;  and  Mr. Mackintosh  states 
that  on  several  occasions,  in  clear  weather,  he  witnessed  the  sun's  rays 
so  concentrated  as  to  burn  the  laborers'  clothes  when  opposed  to  the 
focal  point,  and  this  when  the  machine  was  twenty-five  feet  under  the 
surface  of  the  water. — From  the  MS.  Journal  of  the  Bristol  Nursery 
Library. 


WALKING    UNDER    WATER.  69 

ratus,  by  making  the  upper  chamber  of  the  bell  without 
valves,  and  used  it  as  a  reservoir  of  concTensed  air,  to  be 
filled  by  forcing-pumps  in  the  partition,  besides  other  pro- 
visions. 

Smeaton  first  employed  the  Diving-bell  in  civil  engi- 
neering operations  in  repairing  the  foundations  of  Hexham 
Bridge  in  1779.  His  bell  was  an  oblong  box  of  wood, 
and  supplied  with  a  gallon  of  air  a  minute  by  a  forcing- 
pump  fixed  at  the  top,  which  was  not  covered  with 
water,  the  river  being  shallow.  In  1788  Smeaton  used 
a  cast  iron  bell  in  repairing  Ramsgate  Harbor,  the  air 
being  supplied  through  a  flexible  tube  from  a  forcing- 
pump  in  a  boat.  Rennie  improved  the  apparatus  for 
moving  the  bell  in  any  direction;  and  in  1817  the  wreck 
of  the  Royal  G-eorge  at  Spithead  was  first  surveyed  by 
the  aid  of  the  Diving-bell. 

Many  plans  have  been  proposed  for  enabling  a  man  to 
walk  beneath  the  surface  of  the  water  by  means  of  water- 
proof coverings  for  the  head  and  upper  part  of  the  body, 
or  of  strong  vessels  in  which  every  part  but  the  arms 
should  be  incased ;  a  supply  of  air  being  either  transmit- 
ted from  above  by  a  flexible  pipe,  or  contained  in  the 
cavities  of  the  protecting  armor.  This  apparatus  may 
be  conveniently  used  at  small  depths ;  but  at  any  con- 
siderable depth  it  is  both  dangerous  and  inconvenient, 
because  the  strength  necessary  to  enable  it  to  bear  the 
pressure  of  the  water  is  incompatible  with  the  flexibility 
essential  to  the  free  use  of  the  limbs.  Dr.  Halley  in- 
vented a  leaden  cap  for  the  diver's  head,  the  front  glazed 
for  the  eyes ;  it  contained  a  supply  of  air  for  two  min- 
utes, and  had  affixed  to  it  a  pliable  pipe,  the  other  end 
being  fastened  to  the  bell,  whence  fresh  air  was  convey- 
ed to  the  diver. 

^At  Newton-Bushel,  in  Devonshire,  a  gentleman  con- 
trived an  apparatus  consisting  of  a  large  strong  leather 
water-tight  case,  holding  half  a  hogshead  of  air,  and 
adapted  to  the  legs  and  arms,  with  a  glass  in  front,  so 
that  when  the  case  was  put  on  the  wearer  could  walk 
about  easily  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  examine  a  wreck- 
ed vessel,  and  deliver  out  the  goods ;  the  inventor  of  this 
apparatus  used  it  forty  years,  and  thereby  acquired  a 
large  fortune. 


70  THE    SUBMARINE    NAUTILUS. 

Mr.  Klingert,  in  1798,  constructed  at  Breslau  tin-plate 
armor  for  the  head  and  body,  leather  jacket,  and  water- 
tight drawers  brass  hooped;  and  a  helmet  with  two 
pipes,  one  for  inhaling,  and  the  other  for  the  escape  of 
foul  air.  The  body  was  kept  down  by  weights.  Con- 
trivances of  this  kind,  in  which  water-proof  India-rubber 
cloth  has  been  applied,  are  very  numerous.  In  1839  Mr. 
Thornthwaite  made  a  hollow  belt  of  India-rubber  cloth, 
with  a  small  strong  copper  vessel  attached,  and  into 
which  air  is  forced  by  a  condensing  syringe ;  the  belt  is 
put  on  collapsed,  and  the  diver  descends ;  but  when  he 
desires  to  rise,  by  a  valve  he  lets  out  the  condensed  air 
from  the  copper  vessel  into  the  belt,  which,  as  it  ex- 
pands, buoys  up  the  diver  to  the  surface. 

Extraordinary  substitutes  have  been  sometimes  made 
for  the  regularly-constructed  Diving-bell.  Thus,  in  the 
memorable  recovery  of  treasure  and  stores  from  the  wreck 
of  the  Thetis,  which  sank  in  a  cove  southeast  of  Cape 
Frio  in  1830,  and  was  not  attempted  to  be  raised  until 
fifteen  months  after,  by  the  officers  and  crew  of  H.M.S. 
Lightning,  the  Diving-bell  consisted  of  a  one-ton  ship's 
water-tank,  with  eight  inches  of  iron  riveted  to  the  bot- 
tom in  order  to  give  it  more  depth,  and  having  attached 
to  it  eighteen  pigs  of  ballast  (1 7  cwt.)  to  sink  it.  Yet, 
with  such  a  means  of  survey,  often  rendered  unmanage- 
able by  the  swell  of  the  South  Atlantic  rolling  into  the 
cove  of  nearly  perpendicular  granite  rocks,  from  100  to 
200  feet  high,  fifteen  sixteenths  of  the  property  were  re- 
covered. A  model  of  this  enterprise  may  be  seen  in  the 
United  Service  Institution  Museum,  Scotland  Yard.  For 
the  achievement  Captain  Dickson  received  the  gold  med- 
al of  the  Society  of  Arts.  <» 

One  of  the  latest  improvements  upon  the  old  Diving- 
bell — the  Nautilus  Submarine  Machine,  an  American  in- 
vention— has  been  successfully  employed  by  engineers. 
It  is  nearly  cylindrical,  with  a  spherical  top ;  and  the 
working  apparatus,  on  board  a  barge  floating  near,  con- 
sists of  a  steam-boiler,  a  cylinder  or  reservoir,  and  a  con- 
densing or  air  pump.  The  workmen  being  stationed  in  the 
machine,  water  is  admitted  into  two  chambers,  to  serve 
as  ballast  and  cause  the  Nautilus  to  descend  to  the  bot- 
tom, meanwhile  air  being  drawn  through  hose  from  the 


THE    SUBMARINE    NAUTILUS.  71 

reservoir  in  the  barge.  As  soon  as  the  air  thus  drawn 
is  sufficiently  condensed,  a  cover  to  the  bottom  is  raised, 
and  communication  obtained.  Not  only  do  persons  thus 
remain  under  water  for  a  considerable  time,  but  should 
the  hose  communicating  with  the  reservoir  become  dis- 
connected, no  danger  can  ensue  to  those  in  the  machine, 
as  they  can,  by  means  of  the  compressed  air  within  the 
bell  itself,  expel  a  portion  of  the  water,  and  thus  rise  to 
the  surface. 


AUTOMATA  AND  SPEAKING  MACHINES. 

THE  amusing  species  of  ingenuity  which  is  requisite 
for  the  construction  of  these  machines  has  been  exercised 
to  great  extent.  The  name  Atitomaton  is  derived  from 
two  Greek  words  meaning  self-moved^  and  is  generally 
applied  to  all  machines  which  are  so  constructed  as  to 
imitate  any  actions  of  men  or  the  lower  animals,  and  are 
moved  by  wheels,  weights,  and  springs. 

The  most  ancient  Automata  are  the  Tripods  which 
Homer  mentions  as  having  been  constructed  by  Vulcan 
for  the  banqueting-hall  of  the  gods,  and  which  advanced 
of  their  own  accord  to  the  table,  and  again  returned  to 
their  place.  Self-moving  Tripods  are  mentioned  by  Aris- 
totle ;  and  Philostratus  informs  us,  in  his  Life  of  Apollo- 
nius,  that  this  philosopher  saw  and  admired  similar  pieces 
of  mechanism  among  the  sages  of  India.  Beckmann 
hints  that  these  Tripods  were  only  small  tables,  or  dumb- 
waiters, which  had  wheels  so  contrived  that  they  could 
be  put  in  motion,  and  driven  to  a  distance,  on  the  small- 
est impulse,  like  the  fire-pans  in  the  country  beer-houses 
of  Germany,  at  which  the  boors  light  their  pipes. 

That  Daedalus  made  Statues  which  could  not  only 
walk,  but  required  to  be  tied  up  that  they  might  not 
move,  is  related  by  Plato  and  Aristotle.  The  latter 
speaks  also  of  a  wooden  Venus,  which  moved  about  in 
consequence  of  quicksilver  being  poured  into  its  interior ; 
and  before  this  method  was  known  in  Europe,  Kircher 
proposed  to  put  a  small  wagon  in  motion  by  adding  to 
it  a  pipe  filled  with  quicksilver,  and  heating  it  with  a 
candle  placed  below  it.  Calistratus,  the  tutor  of  Daeda- 
lus,* however,  states  that  his  statues  received  their  mo- 

*  Daedalus,  having  been  banished  From  Athens  for  killing  his 
nephew,  of  whose  rising  genius  he  was  envious,  took  refuge  in  Crete, 
and  here  constructed  the  celebrated  Labyrinth,  in  the  windings  of 
which  he  was  subsequently  confined  as  close  prisoner  by  Minos,  whom 
he  had  displeased.  His  unrivaled  resource,  however,  did  not  forsake 
him ;  he  manufactured  for  himself  and  his  son  Icarus  waxen  wings, 


FRIAK    BACONS    BRAZEN    HEAD.  3 

tion  from  the  mechanical  powers,  which  is  more  probable 
than  the  opinion  of  Beckmann,  that  their  being  in  a  po- 
sition "  as  if  ready  to  walk  gave  rise  to  the  exaggeration 
that  they  possessed  the  power  of  locomotion."  "  This 
opinion,"  Sir  David  Brewster  observes,  "  however,  can 
not  be  maintained  with  any  show  of  reason ;  for  if  we 
apply  such  a  principle  in  one  case,  we  must  apply  it  in 
all,  and  the  mind  would  be  left  in  a  state  of  utter  skep- 
ticism respecting  the  inventions  of  ancient  times"  (JVat- 
ural  Magic,  p.  265). 

It  is  related  by  Aulus  Gellius,  on  the  authority  of 
Favorinus,  that  Archytas  of  Tarentum  (about  400  B.C.) 
constructed  a  Wooden  Pigeon  which  was  capable  of  fly- 
ing. Favorinus  states  that  when  it  had  once  alighted,  it 
could  not  resume  its  flight ;  and  Aulus  Gellius  adds,  that 
it  was  suspended  by  balancing,  and  animated  by  a  con- 
cealed aura,  or  spirit. 

Of  Albertus  Magnus  it  is  related  that,  among  other 
prodigies,  he  constructed  a  Head  of  Brass,  which  is  not 
only  said  to  have  moved,  but  to  have  answered  ques- 
tions !  It  is  said  to  have  occupied  Albertus  thirty  years 
in  its  construction ;  and  that  his  disciple,  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, was  so  frightened  when  he  saw  the  head,  that  he 
broke  it  to  pieces ;  when  Albertus  exclaimed,  "  Periit 
opus  triginta  annorum."  Of  contemporary  date  is  the 
legendary  story  of  "  Friar  Bacon's  Brazen  Head."  It  is 
pretended  he  discovered  that  if  he  could  make  a  head  of 
brass  which  should  speak,  and  hear  it  when  it  spoke,  he 
might  be  able  to  surround  all  England  with  a  wall  of 
brass.  Bacon,  with  some  assistance,  accomplished  his 
object,  but  with  this  drawback — the  head  was  warrant- 
ed to  speak  in  the  course  of  one  month,  but  it  was  quite 
uncertain  when ;  and  if  they  heard  it  not  before  it  had 

with  which  they  flew  over  the  sea.  The  father  arrived  safely  in  Sici- 
ly ;  but  the  son,  in  spite  of  his  father's  example  and  admonition,  flew 
so  high  that  his  wings  were  melted  by  the  sun,  and  he  fell  into  the 
sea,  which  from  him  was  called  the  Icarian  Sea.  It  was  the  ancient 
custom  to  deify  the  authors  of  any  useful  inventions.  Now  Daedalus 
was  especially  famous  for  the  sails  of  ships;  and  "though  they  did 
not  place  him  in  the  heavens,  yet  they  have  promoted  him  as  near  as 
they  could,  feigning  him  to  fly  aloft  in  the  air,  whereas  he  did  but 
fly  in  a  swift  ship,  as  Diodorus  (and  Eusebius)  relates  the  historical 
truth  on  which  that  fiction  is  grounded." — Bishop  Wilkins. 

D 


74  EARLY    AUTOMATA. 

done  speaking,  all  their  labor  would  be  lost.  Bacon, 
wearied  with  three  weeks'  watching,  set  his  man  Miles 
to  watch,  with  strictest  injunction  to  awake  him  if  the 
head  should  speak.  The  fellow  heard  the  head  at  the 
end  of  one  half  hour  say,  "  Time  is ;"  at  the  end  of  an- 
other, "  Time  was ;"  and  at  the  end  of  another  half  hour, 
"Time's  past;"  when  down  it  fell  with  a  tremendous 
crash ;  but  the  blockhead  of  a  servant  thought  his  mas- 
ter would  be  angry  if  he  disturbed  him  for  such  trifles ! 
Now  Robert  Records  states  that  on  the  above  account 
Bacon  was  considered  to  be  a  necromancer,  "which 
never  used  that  arte,"  but  was  an  expert  geometer  and 
mathematician,  as  will  be  shown  in  a  future  page. 

Among  the  earliest  pieces  of  modern  mechanism  was 
the  curious  Water-clock  presented  to  Charlemagne  by 
the  Calif  Haroun-al-Raschid.  In  the  dial-plate  were 
twelve  small  windows  corresponding  with  the  divisions 
of  the  hours,  indicated  by  the  opening  of  the  windows, 
which  let  out  little  metallic  balls,  which  struck  the  hour 
by  falling  upon  a  brazen  bell.  The  doors  continued  open 
till  twelve  o'clock,  when  twelve  little  knights,  mounted 
on  horseback,  came  out  at  the  same  instant,  and,  after 
parading  round  the  dial,  shut  all  the  windows,  and  re- 
turned to  their  apartments. 

The  next  automaton  was  the  Artificial  Eagle,  which 
John  Muller,  or  Regiomontanus,  constructed,  and  which 
flew  to  meet  the  Emperor  Maximilian  when  he  arrived 
at  Nuremberg,  June  7th,  1470.  This  eagle  is  said  to  have 
soared  aloft,  and  met  the  emperor  at  some  distance  from 
the  city;  then  to  have  returned  and  perched  upon  the 
town-gate,  and  to  have  stretched  out  its  wings  and  saluted 
the  emperor  when  he  approached  !  Another  of  Miiller's 
prodigies  was  an  Iron  Fly,  put  in  motion  by  wheel-work, 
and  which  flew  about  and  leaped  upon  a  table !  But  as 
none  of  Miiller's  contemporary  writers  speak  of  these 
pieces  of  mechanism,  the  tale  of  them  is  suspected  to 
have  been  invented  by  Peter  Ramus,  who  was  never  at 
Nuremberg  till  the  year  1571. 

The  Emperor  Charles  V.  is  known  to  have  amused 
himself  in  his  later  years  with  Automata,  made  for  him 
by  an  artist  of  Cremona.  Among  the  prodigies  which  he 
wrought  for  the  emperor  were  figures  of  armed  men  and 


EARLY    AUTOMATA.  75 

horses  attacking  with  spears,  while  others  beat  drums 
and  played  flutes ;  besides,  also,  wooden  sparrows  which 
flew  to  and  from  their  nests,  and  minute  corn-mills  which 
could  be  concealed  in  a  glove. 

It  will  hardly  excite  surprise  to  find  that  the  artists 
who  produced  Automaton  figures  were  in  some  instances 
suspected  of  practicing  the  black  art,  and  thus  fell  vic- 
tims to  their  own  ingenuity.  A  melancholy  incident, 
arising  from  the  prevalence  of  this  opinion,  even  so  late 
as  1674,  is  related  by  Bonnet,  in  his  History  of  Music. 
Alex,  an  ingenious  Proven9al  mathematician  and  mecha- 
nician, had  discovered  the  sympathy  of  sound  in  two  in- 
struments tuned  in  unison.  To  illustrate  his  discovery, 
he  constructed  an  Automaton  Skeleton,  placed  a  guitar 
in  its  hand,  while  by  a  mechanical  contrivance  the  fingers 
moved,  as  though  playing  it :  he  then  set  it  at  a  window, 
and  at  a  proper  distance  played  another  guitar,  which 
produced  sound  in  the  instrument  held  by  the  figure. 
The  inhabitants  of  Aix  (the  town  in  which  this  was  ex- 
hibited), believing  that  the  skeleton  really  performed  on 
the  guitar,  denounced  Alex  as  a  sorcerer,  and  he  was 
condemned  by  the  Parliament  to  be  burnt  alive,  together 
with  his  figure. 

In  the  Memoirs  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  1729,  is  de- 
scribed a  set  of  Automaton  Actors  representing  a  panto- 
mime. But  previously  to  this,  M.  Camus  had  constructed, 
for  the  amusement  of  Louis  XIV.,  a  small  coach  drawn 
by  two  horses,  etc.  The  coachman  smacked  his  whip, 
and  the  horses  set  off,  drawing  the  coach  about  a  table ; 
and  when  opposite  the  king,  it  stopped,  the  page  got 
down  and  opened  the  door,  on  which  a  lady  alighted, 
with  a  courtesy  presented  a  petition  to  the  king,  and 
then  re-entered  the  carriage.  The  page  then  shut  the 
door,  the  carriage  proceeded,  and  the  servant,  running 
after  it,  jumped  up  behind  it  (Hutton's  Mathematical 
Recreations).  This  is  by  no  means  inconceivable,  but  is 
somewhat  hard  to  believe. 

Among  the  results  of  the  development  of  the  natural 
sciences  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  was 
the  attempt  to  build  Automaton  figures  which  should 
perform  the  functions  of  animals  by  means  of  wheels  and 
pinions.  Thus,  General  Degennes,  who  invented  machines 


76  VAUCANSON'S  AUTOMATON  DUCK. 

in  navigation  and  gunnery,  and  constructed  clocks  with- 
out springs  or  weights,  made  a  peacock,  which  could  walk 
about  as  if  alive,  pick  up  grains  of  corn  from  the  ground, 
eat  and  digest  them. 

This  automaton  is  thought  to  have  suggested  to  M. 
Vaucanson  the  idea  of  constructing  his  celebrated  Duck, 
perhaps  the  most  wronderful  piece  of  mechanism  ever 
made.  It  resembled  a  living  duck  in  size  and  appear- 
ance, ate  and  drank  with  avidity,  performed  the  quick 
motions  of  the  head  and  throat  peculiar  to  the  living  an- 
imal, and,  like  it,  dabbled  in  the  water,  which  it  drank 
with  its  bill.  It  produced  also  the  sound  of  quacking. 
In  its  anatomical  structure  every  bone  of  the  real  duck 
had  its  representative,  and  exhibited  its  proper  move- 
ment, as  its  wings  were  anatomically  correct;  and  the 
automaton  picked  up  corn,  swallowed  it,  and,  being  di- 
gested by  a  chemical  solution,  the  food  was  conveyed 
away  by  tubes.  This  famous  automaton  was  repaired 
by  Robert  Houdin,  the  Parisian  conjuror,  who,  on  ex- 
amining the  mechanism  of  the  Duck,  found  the  trick  to 
be  as  simple  as  it  was  interesting.  "A  vase,"  he  tells  us, 
"  containing  seed  steeped  in  water,  was  placed  before  the 
bird.  The  motion  of  the  bill  in  dabbling  crushed  the 
food,  and  facilitated  its  introduction  into  a  pipe  placed 
beneath  the  lower  bill.  The  water  and  seed  thus  swal- 
lowed fell  into  a  box  placed  under  the  bird's  stomach, 
which  was  emptied  every  three  or  four  days.  The  other 
part  of  the  operation  was  thus  effected :  bread-crumb, 
colored  green,  was  expelled  by  a  forcing  pump,  and  care- 
fully caught  on  a  silver  salver  as  the  result  of  artificial 
digestion"  (Houdin's  Memoirs,  1859). 

Vaucanson' s  Automata  were  imitated  by  one  Du  Mou- 
lin, a  silversmith,  who  traveled  through  Germany  in  1752. 
Beckmann  saw  several  of  these  automata,  and  among 
them  an  Artificial  Duck,  which  was  able  to  drink  and 
move :  its  ribs  were  made  of  wire,  and  covered  with  duck's 
feathers,  and  the  motion  was  communicated  through  the 
feet  of  the  duck  by  means*  of  a  cylinder  and  fine  chains, 
as  iiv  a  watch. 

Vaucanson  also  constructed  a  Flute-player,  which  really 
played  on  the  flute  by  projecting  air  with  its  lips  against 
the  embouchure,  producing  the  different  octaves  by  ex- 


THE   AUTOMATON   FLUTE-PLAYER.  77 

panding  and  contracting  their  opening ;  forcing  more  or 
less  air  in  the  manner  of  living  performers,  and  regulat- 
ing the  tones  by  its  fingers. 

Of  these  automata,  or  rather  androides,  the  Flute-player  of  Vau- 
canson  is  the  only  one  of  which  a  correct  description  has  been  pre- 
served, a  particular  account  of  its  mechanism  having  been  published 
in  the  Memoirs  of  the  French  Academy.  The  figure  was  about  five 
feet  six  inches  high,  and  was  placed  upon  an  elevated  square  pedes- 
tal. The  air  entered  the  body  by  three  separate  pipes,  into  which  it 
was  conveyed  by  nine  pairs  of  bellows,  which  expanded  and  contract- 
ed in  regular  succession  by  means  of  an  axis  of  steel  turned  by  the 
machine.  The  three  tubes,  which  conveyed  the  air  from  the  bellows, 
after  passing  through  the  lower  extremities  of  the  figure,  united  at  the 
chest,  and,  ascending  from  thence  to  the  mouth,  passed  through  two 
artificial  lips.  Within  the  cavity  of  the  mouth  was  a  small  movable 
tongue,  which,  by  its  motion  at  proper  intervals,  admitted  or  intercept- 
ed the  air  in  its  passage  to  the  flute.  The  fingers,  lips,  and  tongue 
derived  their  specific  movements  from  a  steel  cylinder  turned  by  clock- 
work. The  cylinder  was  divided  into  fifteen  equal  parts,  which,  by 
means  of  pegs  pressing  upon  a  like  number  of  levers,  caused  the  other 
extremities  to  ascend.  Seven  of  these  levers  directed  the  fingers, 
having  rods  and  chains  fixed  to  their  ascending  extremities ;  which, 
being  attached  to  the  fingers,  made  them  ascend  in  proportion  as  the 
other  extremity  was  pressed  down  by  the  motion  of  the  cylinders,  and 
vice  versa.  Three  of  the  levers  served  to  regulate  the  ingress  of  the 
air,  being  so  contrived  as  to  open  and  shut,  by  mean^s  of  valves,  the 
communication  between  the  lips  and  reservoir,  so  that  more  or  less 
strength  might  be  given,  and  a  higher  or  lower  note  produced,  as  oc- 
casion required.  The  lips  were  directed  by  four  similar  levers,  one  of 
which  opened  to  give  the  air  a  freer  passage,  another  contracted  them, 
a  third  drew  them  backward,  and  the  fourth  pushed  them  forward. 
The  remaining  lever  was  employed  in  the  direction  of  the  tongue, 
which,  by  its  motion,  shut  or  opened  the  mouth  of  the  flute.  The 
varied  and  successive  motions  performed  by  this  ingenious  androides 
were  regulated  by  a  contrivance  no  less  simple  than  efficacious.  The 
axis  of  the  steel  cylinder  or  barrel  was  terminated  by  an  endless  screw 
composed  of  twelve  threads,  above  which  was  placed  a  small  arm  cf 
copper,  with  a  steel  stud  made  to  fit  the  threads  of  the  worm,  which, 
by  its  vertical  motion,  was  continually  pushed  forward.  Hence,  if  a 
lever  were  moved  by  a  peg  placed  on  the  cylinder  in  any  one  revolu- 
tion, it  could  not  be  moved  by  the  same  peg  in  the  succeeding  revolu- 
tion, in  consequence  of  the  lateral  motion  communicated  by  the  worm. 
By  this  means  the  size  of  the  barrel  was  considerably  reduced ;  and 
the  statue  not  only  poured  forth  a  varied  selection  of  instrumental 
harmony,  but  exhibited  all  the  evolutions  of  the  most  graceful  per- 
former. 

It  is  curious  to  find  that  Vaucanson's  uncle  reproach- 
ed him  by  telling  him  that  to  construct  the  Flute-player 
would  be  a  great  waste  of  time,  and  he  did  not  set  about 


78  AUTOMATON    BOYS. 

the  work  until  he  lacked  employment  to  while  away  the 
time  after  a  long  illness.  He  also  made  a  Flageolet-play- 
er, who  beat  a  tambourine  with  one  hand.  The  flageolet 
had  only  three  holes,  by  half  stopping  which  some  notes 
were  made :  the  force  of  wind  required  to  produce  the 
lowest  note  was  one  ounce ;  the  highest,  56  Ibs.  French. 
Jacques  Vaucanson,  the  maker  of  these  Automata,  was 
a  native  of  Grenoble,  born  in  1 709.  His  mother  took  him 
one  day  to  a  fete,  when,  peeping  through  a  crack  in  the 
partition  of  a  room,  he  saw  part  of  the  works  of  a  clock 
which  hung  against  the  wall;  he  was  much  struck,  and, 
on  his  next  visit,  he  drew  with  a  pencil  as  much  as  he 
could  see  of  the  clock-springs  and  the  escapement ;  and 
by  aid  of  some  poor  tools,  he  soon  made  a  clock.  Then 
he  made  a  sort  of  baby-house  chapel,  with  figures,  which 
he  caused  to  move.  At  length  he  devoted  all  his  time 
to  studying  anatomy,  music,  and  mechanics.  He  grew 
to  be  so  celebrated,  that  the  King  of  Prussia  tried  to  at- 
tach Vaucanson  to  his  court :  he,  however,  remained  in 
France,  where  Cardinal  Fleury  made  him  inspector  of 
silk  manufactures,  for  which  he  greatly  improved  the  ma- 
chinery. This  rendered  Vaucanson  unpopular,  and  he 
was  nearly  killed  by  an  incensed  mob.  He  died  in  1782, 
having  bequeathed  his  curious  collection  of  machines  to 
Louis  XVI. 

Next  deserve  to  be  mentioned  the  Writing  Boy  of  the 
older,  and  the  Piano-forte-player  of  the  younger  Droz ; 
which  latter,  when  performing,  followed  its  hands  with 
its  eyes,  and  at  the  conclusion  of  the  piece  bowed  court- 
eously to  the  audience.  Droz's  Writing  Boy  was  pub- 
licly exhibited  in  Germany  some  years  ago.  Its  wheel- 
work  is  so  complicated  that  no  ordinary  head  would  be 
sufficient  to  decipher  its  manner  of  action  ;  when,  how- 
ever, we  learn  that  the  Boy  and  its  constructor,  being 
suspected  of  the  black  art,  lay  for  a  time  in  the  Spanish 
Inquisition,  and  with  difficulty  obtained  their  freedom, 
we  may  infer  that  in  those  days  even  the  mystery  of  such 
a  toy  was  great  enough  to  excite  doubts  as  to  its  natural 
origin. 

M.  Maillardet  next  constructed  an  Automaton  Boy, 
which  both  wrote  and  drew  with  a  pencil,  kneeling  on 
one  knee.  When  the  figure  began  to  work,  an  attendant 


MUSICAL    AUTOMATA.  79 

dipped  the  pencil  in  ink,  and  adjusted  the  drawing-paper 
upon  a  brass  tablet.  Upon  touching  a  spring,  the  figure 
proceeded  to  write  or  to  execute  landscape  drawings. 
Maillardet  also  constructed  a  Magician,  wTho  answered 
questions  inscribed  in  oval  medallions  upon  a  wall ;  one 
of  which  the  spectator  having  selected,  it  was  shut  up  in 
a  spring  drawer.  The  magician  then  rose,  consulted  his 
book,  and  striking  a  wall  with  his  wand,  two  folding 
doors  flew  open,  and  displayed  the  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion. The  door  again  closed,  and  the  drawer  opened  to 
return  the  medallion.  The  machinery  being  wound  up, 
the  movements  in  about  an  hour  answered  fifty  ques- 
tions ;  and  the  means  by  which  the  medallions  acted  upon 
the  machinery,  so  as  to  produce  the  proper  answers  to 
the  questions  which  they  contained,  is  stated  to  have 
been  very  simple.  Maillardet  likewise  constructed  other 
automata,  including  a  Spider,  made  of  steel ;  and  a  Cat- 
erpillar, Lizard,  Mouse,  and  Serpent,  all  with  their  nat- 
ural movements.  In  London  he  exhibited  in  Spring  Gar- 
dens. 

Musical  automata  have  obtained  great  celebrity.  Mael- 
zel,  the  inventor  of  the  Metronome,  exhibited  in  1809  an 
automaton  trumpeter  of  his  construction.  From  a  tent 
he  led  out  a  figure  in  the  uniform  of  a  trumpeter  of  the 
Austrian  dragoon  regiment  Albert,  his  trumpet  being  at 
his  mouth.  Having  pressed  the  figure  on  the  left  shoul- 
der, it  played  the  Austrian  cavalry  march,  the  signals, 
and  a  march  and  allegro  by  Weigl,  accompanied  by  the 
whole  orchestra.  The  dress  of  the  figure  was  then 
changed  into  that  of  a  French  trumpeter  of  the  Guard, 
when  it  played  the  French  cavalry  march,  all  the  signals, 
a  march  of  Dussek's,  and  an  allegro  of  Pleyel,  all  accom- 
panied by  the  orchestra.  The  sound  of  the  trumpet  was 
pure,  and  more  agreeable  than  that  which  the  ablest  mu- 
sician could  produce  from  that  instrument,  because  the 
breath  of  man  gives  the  inside  of  the  trumpet  a  moisture 
which  is  prejudicial  to  the  purity  of  the  tone.  Maelzel 
publicly  wound  up  his  instrument  only  twice,  and  this 
was  on  the  left  hip.  His  most  famous  work  was  his 
Panharmonica,  a  band  of  forty-two  wind-instrument 
players,  for  which  Cherubini  deigned  to  compose,  and 
Beethoven  wrote  his  Battle  symphony.  Maelzel  died  in 


80  SPEAKING   MACHINES. 

1855.  Marreppe,  in  1837,  produced  his  automaton  violin- 
player  at  Paris,  which  played  airs  a  la  Paganini;  the  in- 
terior was  filled  with  small  cranks,  by  which  the  motions 
were  given  to  the  several  parts  of  the  automaton  at  the 
conductor's  will. 

In  the  speaking  machines  of  antiquity,  the  head  of  Or- 
pheus in  the  island  of  Lesbos,  and  the  tripod  at  Delphi, 
the  answers  were  probably  conveyed  by  the  priests ;  and 
Charles  II.  and  his  court  were  similarly  deceived  by  a 
Popish  priest  in  an  adjoining  chamber  answering  through 
a  pipe  the  question  proposed  to  the  wrooden  head  by 
whispering  in  its  ear. 

The  principle  of  a  speaking-machine  has,  however,  been 
developed.  Bishop  Wilkins,  in  his  Mathematical  Magic, 
illustrating  the  mode  by  which  articulate  sounds  may  be 
produced  from  automata,  says :  "  Walchius  thinks  it  pos- 
sible entirely  to  preserve  the  voice,  or  any  words  spoken 
in  a  hollow  trunk  or  pipe ;  and  that,  this  pipe  being  right- 
ly opened,  the  words  will  come  out  of  it  in  the  same  or- 
der wherein  they  were  spoken,  somewhat  like  that  cold 
country  where  the  people's  discourse  doth  freeze  in  the 
air  all  winter,  and  may  be  heard  in  the  next  summer  or 
at  a  great  thaw ;  but  this  conjecture  will  need  no  refuta- 
tion." 

Van  Helmont,  one  of  the  first  persons  who  wrote  upon 
the  adaptation  of  the  organs  of  the  voice  to  the  articula- 
tion of  the  letters,  considered  that  the  letters  of  the  al- 
phabet constituted  the  order  in  which  articulate  sounds 
were  naturally  produced  by  the  structure  of  the  tongue 
and  larynx ;  that,  when  one  letter  was  uttered,  the  tongue 
was  in  its  proper  position  for  the  pronunciation  of  the  sub- 
sequent one.  Thus,  as  several  different  sounds  are  form- 
ed merely  by  raising  or  depressing  the  tongue  slightly, 
as  in  the  sounds  Au\  Ah,  Ae,  A,  E,  it  was  easy  to  pro- 
duce them  by  means  of  a  tube  with  a  reed,  and  termina- 
ting with  a  bell.  Mr.  Willis  has  effected  this  by  using  a 
long  tube  with  a  reed,  capable  of  being  lengthened  or 
shortened  at  pleasure.  In  the  pronunciation  of  the  vow- 
els, i,  e,  a,  o,  u,  it  required  to  be  shortest  with  the  first, 
and  in  uttering  the  subsequent  letters  to  be  gradually 
lengthened.  In  this  way  it  was  easy  to  measure  the 
length  necessary  for  each  note.  When  Ae  was  pro- 


SPEAKING   MACHINES.  81 

nounced,  the  tube  was  1  inch  long;  Aw,  3*8  inches ;  Ah, 
2-2  inches ;  A,  0'6  inch ;  .Z?,  0'3  inch.  A  speaking  ma- 
chine invented  in  Germany  pronounced  distinctly  mam- 
ma, papa,  mother,  father,  summer.  The  instrument  con- 
sists of  a  pair  of  bellows,  to  which  is  adapted  a  tube  term- 
inating in  a  bell,  the  aperture  of  which  is  regulated  by  the 
hand,  so  as  to  produce  the  articulate  sounds.  This  ma- 
chine was  exhibited  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1835  by 
Professor  Wheatstone. 

De  Kempelen,  the  inventor  of  the  automaton  chess- 
player, also  constructed  a  speaking  automaton,  in  which 
he  ultimately  succeeded  so  far  as  to  make  it  pronounce 
several  sentences,  among  the  best  of  which  were,  "  Ro- 
manorum  imperator  semper  Augustus ;"  "  Leopoldus  se- 
cundus ;"  "  Vous  etes  mon  ami ;"  "  Je  vous  aime  de  tout 
mon  coeur."  It  was  some  years,  however,  before  he  could 
accomplish  more  than  the  simple  utterance  of  the  sounds 
o,  ou,  and  e.  Year  after  year,  we  are  told,  was  devoted 
to  this  machine  ;  but  i  or  u,  or  any  of  the  consonants,  re- 
fused to  obey  his  summons.  At  length  he  added  at  the 
open  extremity  of  the  vocal  tube  an  apparatus  similar  in 
action  and  construction  to  the  human  mouth  with  its 
teeth,  when  he  quickly  succeeded  in  making  it  not  only 
pronounce  the  consonants,  but  words,  and  even  the  sen- 
tences quoted  above.  He  had  previously  imitated  the 
tongue  and  its  actions.  The  fact  is  interesting,  not  only 
as  a  rare  instance  of  human  ingenuity,  but  also  as  exhib- 
iting in  a  most  striking  light  the  beautiful  adaptation  of 
parts  to  their  respective  functions ;  and  that  so  perfect 
are  the  contrivances  in  Nature  for  particular  ends,  that, 
in  order  to  arrive  at  any  thing  like  an  imitation  of  those 
functions,  we  must  follow  closely  the  method  she  em- 
ploys. 

In  1843  there  was  exhibited  before  the  American  Phil- 
osophical Society  a  speaking  machine,  susceptible  of  va- 
rious movements  by  means  of  keys,  and  thus  made  to 
enunciate  various  letters  and  words ;  in  enunciating  the 
simple  sounds  could  be  seen  the  movements  of  the  mouth, 
the  parts  of  which  were  made  of  caoutchouc.  The  in- 
ventor, Mr.  Reale,  in  a  phrensy,  destroyed  this  instru- 
ment, which  it  had  taken  him  sixteen  years  to  construct. 

Three  years  later,  in  1846,  there  was  shown  at  the 
D  2 


82  SPEAKING    MACHINES. 

Egyptian  tlall,  Piccadilly,  the  Euphonia  of  Professor 
Faber,  of  Vienna,  the  result  of  twenty-five  years'  labor. 
It  consisted  of  a  draped  bust  and  waxen-faced  figure,  in 
which  the  sounds  were  produced  by  striking  on  sixteen 
keys,  and  thus  were  enunciated  words.  A  small  pair  of 
bellows  was  worked  with  the  nozzle  into  the  back  part  of 
the  head,  and  the  mouth  formations  were  of  caoutchouc. 

ISTow,  the  several  attempts  of  Cagniard  la  Tour,  Biot, 
Miiller,  and  Steinle  to  produce  articulate  sounds,  or  even 
to  imitate  the  human  voice,  have  not  been  very  success- 
ful; but  M.  Faber's  machine — with  its  bellows  worked 
by  a  pedal,  and  its  caoutchouc  imitation  of  the  larynx, 
tongue,  nostrils,  and  a  set  of  keys  by  which  the  springs 
are  brought  into  action — is  considered  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  perfect  success. 

Reviewing  the  results  of  the  Automata  of  the  last 
century,  Professor  Helniholtz  observes :  "  This  inventive 
genius  was  boldly  chosen,  and  was  followed  up  with  an 
expenditure  of  sagacity  which  has  contributed  not  a  lit- 
tle to  enrich  the  mechanical  experience  which  a  later  age 
knew  how  to  take  advantage  of.  We  no  longer  seek  to 
build  machines  which  shall  fulfill  the  thousand  services 
required  of  one  man,  but  strive,  on  the  contrary,  that  a 
machine  shall  perform  one  service,  but  shall  occupy,  in 
doing  it,  the  place  of  a  thousand  men." 

Nevertheless,  the  above  passion  for  automatic  exhi- 
bitions introduced  among  the  higher  order  of  artists  hab- 
its of  nice  and  accurate  execution  in  the  formation  of  the 
most  delicate  pieces  of  machinery ;  and  the  same  com- 
bination of  the  mechanical  powers  which  in  one  century 
enriched  only  the  conjuror  who  used  them,  is  in  another 
employed  in  extending  the  power  and  promoting  the 
civilization  of  our  species. 

Robert  Houdin  is  one  of  the  latest  adepts  in  automatic 
art.  He  was  born  at  Blois,  the  son  of  a  watchmaker,  and 
had  such  early  mechanical  tastes  that  he  professes  to  have 
come  into  the  world  metaphorically,  "  with  a  file  or  ham- 
mer in  his  hand."  His  aptitude  showed  itself  in  early 
efforts  to  train  mice  and  canary-birds,  to  construct  ingen- 
ious toys  and  model  apparatus ;  and  he  perfected  him- 
self at  Paris  as  a  mechanist.  In  1844  he  made  himself 
widely  known  by  exhibiting  an  Automaton  Writer,  which 


AUTOMATON   NIGHTINGALE.  83 

attracted  the  notice  of  Louis  Philippe  and  his  family. 
The  figure  drew,  as  well  as  wrote  answers  to  questions, 
and  by  a  curious  coincidence  its  performance  on  this  oc- 
casion was  particularly  ominous.  When  the  Comte  de 
Paris  requested  it  to  draw  a  crown,  the  Automaton  began 
drawing  the  outline  demanded,  but  its  pencil  broke,  and 
the  crown  could  not  be  finished.  Houdin  was  going  to 
recommence  the  experiment,  when  the  kingj  declined, 
with  thanks.  "As  you  have  learned  to  draw,"  he  said 
to  the  Comte  de  Paris,  "  you  can  finish  this  for  your- 
self." This  incident  is  characteristic  as  regards  the  tact 
of  the  king. 

Houdin,  in  his  Memoirs,*  relates  the  following  remark- 
able proof  of  his  assiduity  in  this  mechanical  phase  of  his 
life.  He  had  received  an  order  from  a  merchant  of  St. 
Petersburg  to  construct  an  Automaton  Nightingale,  and 
he  agreed  for  a  large  sum  to  make  a  perfect  imitation  of 
the  above  bird.  This  undertaking  oifered  some  serious 
difficulties ;  for,  he  tells  us,  though  he  had  already  made 
several  birds,  their  singing  was  quite  arbitrary,  and  he 
had  only  consulted  his  own  taste  in  arranging  it.  The 
imitation  of  the  nightingale's  pipe  was  much  more  deli- 
cate, for  he  had  to  copy  notes  and  sounds  which  were 
almost  inimitable.  Fortunately,  it  was  the  season  for  this 
skillful  songster,  and  Houdin  resolved  to  employ  him  as 
his  teacher.  He  went  constantly  to  the  wood  of  Romain- 
ville,  the  skirt  of  which  almost  joined  the  street  in  which 
he  lived ;  and,  laying  himself  on  a  soft  bed  of  moss  in 
the  densest  foliage,  he  challenged  his  master  to  give  him 
lessons.  (The  nightingale  sings  both  by  night  and  day, 
and  the  slightest  whistle,  in  tune  or  not,  makes  him 
strike  up  directly.)  Houdin  wanted  to  imprint  on  his 
memory  the  musical  phrases  with  which  the  bird  com- 
poses its  melodies.  The  following  are  the  most  striking 
among  them :  Tioii-tiou-tiou,  ut-ut-ut-ut-ut,  tchitchou,  tchit- 
chou,  tchit-tchit,  rrrrrrrrrrrrrouit,  etc.  Houdin  had  to 
analyze  these  strange  sounds — these  numberless  chirps, 
these  impossible  "  rrrrrouits,"  and  recompose  them  by  a 
musical  process.  To  imitate  this  flexibility  of  throat, 
and  reproduce  the  harmonious  modulations,  Houdin  made 

*  Memoirs  of  Robert  Houdin,  Embassador,  Author,  and  Conjuror. 
Written  by  him  self.  1 859. 


84  EXPANDING   MODEL. 

a  small  copper  tube,  about  the  size  and  length  of  a  quill, 
in  which  a  steel  piston,  moving  very  freely,  produced  the 
different  sounds  required ;  this  tube  represented  in  some 
respects  the  nightingale's  throat.  This  instrument  had 
to  work  mechanically :  clockwork  set  in  motion  the  bel- 
lows, opened  or  closed  a  valve  which  produced  the  twit- 
tering, the  modulation,  and  the  sliding  notes,  while  it 
guided  the  piston  according  to  the  different  degrees  of 
speed  and  depth  wanted.  Houdin  had  also  to  impart 
motion  to  the  bird :  it  must  move  its  beak  in  accordance 
with  the  sounds  it  produced,  flap  its  wings,  and  leap 
from  branch  to  branch,  which,  however,  was  purely  a 
mechanical  labor. 

After  repeated  experiments,  Houdin  succeeded  in  cre- 
ating a  system  half  musical,  half  mechanical,  which  only 
required  to  be  improved  by  fresh  studies  from  nature. 
Provided  with  this  instrument,  Houdin  hurried  off  to 
the  wood  of  Romainville,  where,  seating  himself  under 
an  oak,  near  which  he  had  often  heard  a  nightingale  sing, 
he  wound  up  the  clockwork,  and  it  began  playing  in  the 
midst  of  profound  silence  ;  but  the  last  notes  had  scarce- 
ly died  away  ere  a  concert  commenced  from  various 
parts  of  the  wood.  This  collective  lesson  did  not  suit 
his  purpose,  for  he  wished  to  compare  and  study,  and 
could  positively  distinguish  nothing.  Fortunately  for 
Houdin,  all  the  musicians  ceased,  and  one  of  them  began 
a  solo  of  dulcet  sounds  and  accents,  which  Houdin  most 
attentively  followed,  thus  passing  a  portion  of  the  night, 
when  the  conjuror  returned  home.  His  lesson  had  done 
him  so  much  good,  that  the  next  morning  he  began 
making  important  corrections  in  his  mechanism ;  and 
after  five  or  six  more  visits  to  the  wood,  Houdin  attain- 
ed the  required  result — the  nightingale's  song  was  per- 
fectly imitated. 

In  the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851  was  shown  a  mechan- 
ical curiosity — an  expanding  Model  of  a  Man,  the  con- 
struction of  which  has  a  romantic  interest.  It  was, the 
invention  of  the  Polish  Count  Dunin,  who  in  early  life 
became  involved  in  the  insurrection  of  his  countrymen, 
and  was  banished.  In  his  dreary  exile  he  betook  him- 
self to  mechanical  pursuits,  that  he  might  expiate  his  of- 
fense, real  or  imaginary,  against  the  Emperor  of  Russia, 


EXPANDING   MODEL.  85 

by  showing  that  he  might  be  useful  if  he  were  restored 
to  his  country. 

The  model  represents  a  man  5  feet  high  in  the  proportions  of  the 
Apollo  Belvidere ;  from  that  size  it  can  be  proportionally  increased  to 
6  feet  8  inches ;  and  as  it  is  intended  to  measure  the  clothing  of  an 
army,  it  is  capable  of  expansion  and  contraction  in  all  its  parts.  The 
internal  mechanism  is  completely  concealed,  the  figure  externally 
being  composed  of  thin  slips  of  steel  and  copper,  by  the  overlapping 
of  which  expansion  or  contraction  is  exercised,  the  motion  being  com- 
municated by  thin  metal  slides  within  the  figure,  these  slides  having 
pins  worked  in  curved  grooves  in  circular  steel  plates,  which  are  put 
in  revolution  by  a  train  of  wheels  or  screws.  A  winding-key,  turned 
right  or  left,  effects  the  expansion  or  contraction  noiselessly,  and  in 
the  direction  of  the  fibres  of  the  muscles  in  the  Jiving  subject.  The 
mechanical  combinations  are  composed  of  857  framing-pieces,  48 
grooved  steel  plates,  163  wheels,  203  slides,  476  metal  washers,  488 
spiral  springs,  704  sliding  plates,  497  nuts,  3500  fixing  and  adjusting 
screws,  with  numerous  steadying  pins,  so  that  the  number  of  pieces 
is  upward  of  7000.  For  this  beautiful  piece  of  mechanism  a  Great- 
Exhibition  Council  Medal  was  awarded  to  Count  Dunin. 


THE  AUTOMATON  CHESS-PLAYER. 

WE  have  reserved  for  a  separate  chapter  the  origin 
and  history  of  this  marvelous  contrivance,  which,  at  va- 
rious periods  during  the  lapse  of  ninety  years,  has  aston- 
ished and  delighted  the  scientific  world  in  several  cities 
of  Europe  and  North  America.  Its  machinery  has  been 
variously  explained.  It  was  constructed  in  1769  by  M. 
de  Kempelen,  a  gentleman  of  Presburg,  in  Hungary, 
long  distinguished  for  his  skill  in  mechanics.  The  Chess- 
player is  a  life-sized  figure,  clothed  in  a  Turkish  dress, 
sitting  behind  a  large  chest,  three  and  a  half  feet  long, 
two  feet  deep,  and  two  and  a  half  feet  high.  The  player 
sits  on  a  chair  fixed  to  the  chest,  his  right  arm  rests  on 
the  table  or  upper  surface  of  the  chest,  and  in  the  left  he 
holds  a  pipe,  which  is  removed  during  the  game,  as  it  is 
with  this  hand  that  he  makes  the  moves.  A  chess-board, 
with  the  pieces,  is  placed  before  the  figure.  The  exhib- 
itor first  opens  the  doors  of  the  chest,  and  shows  the 
interior,  with  its  cylinders,  levers,  wheels,  pinions,  and 
other  pieces  of  machinery,  which  have  the  appearance 
of  occupying  the  whole  space.  This  machinery  being 
wound  up,  the  Automaton  is  ready  to  play ;  and  when 
an  opponent  has  been  found,  the  figure  takes  the  first 
move,  moves  its  head,  and  seems  to  look  over  every  part 
of  the  chess-board.  When  it  gives  check  to  its  opponent 
it  shakes  its  head  thrice,  and  only  twice  when  it  checks 
the  queen.  It  likewise  shakes  its  head  when  a  false  move 
is  made,  replaces  the  adversary's  piece  on  the  square 
from  which  it  was  taken,  and  takes  the  next  move  itself. 
In  general,  though  not  always,  the  Automaton  wins  the 
game.  During  its  progress,  the  exhibitor  often  stood 
near  the  machine,  and  wound  it  up  like  a  clock  after  it 
had  made  ten  or  twelve  moves.  At  other  times  he  went 
to  a  corner  of  the  room,  as  if  it  were  to  consult  a  small 
square  box,  which  stood  open  for  this  purpose. 

The  earliest  English  account  of  the  Automaton  Chess- 


THE    ATOMATON   CHESS-PLAYEK.  87 

player  that  we  can  find  is  in  a  letter  from  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Dutens  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  dated  Presburg, 
January  24,  1771.  The  writer  formed  an  acquaintance 
with  the  inventor,  whom  he  terms  M.  de  Kempett  (not 
Kempelen),  an  Aulic  counselor,  and  director  general  of 
the  salt  mines  in  Hungary.  Mr.  Dutens  played  a  game 
at  chess  with  the  Automaton  at  Presburg ;  the  English 
embassador,  Prince  Giustiniani,  and  several  English 
lords,  standing  round  the  table. 

"They  all,"  according,  to  Mr.  Dutens,  "had  their  eyes  on  M.  de 
Kempett,  who  stood  by  the  table,  or  sometimes  removed  five  or  six 
feet  from  it,  yet  not  one  of  them  could  discover  the  least  motion  in 

him  that  could  influence  the  Automaton He  also  withdraws 

to  any  distance  you  please,  and  lets  the  figure  play  four  or  five  moves 
successively  without  approaching  it.  The  marvelous  in  this  Automa- 
ton consists  chiefly  in  this,  that  it  has  not  (as'in  others,  the  most  cel- 
ebrated machines  of  this  sort)  one  determined  series  of  movements, 
but  that  it  always  moves  in  consequence  of  the  manner  in  which  its 
opponent  moves,  which  produces  an  amazing  multitude  of  different 
combinations  in  its  movements.  M.  de  Kempett  winds  up  from  time 
to  time  the  springs  of  the  arms  of  this  automaton,  in  order  to  renew 
its  motive  force ;  but  this,  you  will  observe,  has  no  relation  to  its  guid- 
ing force  or  power  of  direction,  which  makes  the  great  merit  of  this 
machine.  In  general,  I  am  of  opinion  that  the  contriver  influences 
the  direction  of  almost  every  stroke  played  by  the  Automaton,  al- 
though, as  I  have  said,  I  have  sometimes  seen  him  leave  it  to  itself 
for  many  moves  together,  which,  in  my  opinion,  is  the  most  difficult 
circumstance  of  all  to  comprehend  in  what  regards  this  machine." 

Mr.  Staunton,  the  celebrated  chess-player,  states  that 
De  Kempelen  constructed  the  Automaton  "  merely  to  af- 
ford a  passing  amusement  to  the  Empress  Maria  Teresa 
and  her  court."  Upon  its  completion,  it  was  exhibited 
at  Presburg  and  Vienna;  in  1783,  in  Paris;  and  in  that 
and  the  following  year  in  London  and  different  parts  of 
England,  without  the  secret  of  its  movements  having 
been  discovered.  "  It  was  subsequently,"  says  Mr.  Staun- 
ton, "  taken,  by  special  invitation  of  the  emperor,  to  the 
court  of  Frederick  the  Great  at  Berlin.  This  prince  was 
devotedly  attached  to  chess ;  and  in  a  moment  of  liberal- 
ity, he  proffered  an  enormous  sum  for  the  purchase  of  the 
Automaton  and  its  secret.  The  offer  was  accepted,  and 
in  a  private  interview  with  De  Kempelen,  he  was  fur- 
nished with  a  key  to  the  mystery.  In  a  short  time,  how- 
ever, Frederick  threw  aside  the  novelty  so  dearly  bought, 


88  THE   AUTOMATON    CHESS-PLAYER. 

and  for  many  years  it  lay  forgotten  and  neglected  among 
the  lumber  of  his  palace. 

"M.  Kempelen  died  in  1804;  but  in  two  years  after, 
when  Napoleon  I.  occupied  Berlin,  we  find  the  Chess  Au- 
tomaton in  the  field  again  under  a  new  master.  On  one 
occasion  of  its  exhibition  at  this  period,  Napoleon  him- 
self is  said  to  have  entered  the  lists.  After  some  half 
dozen  moves,  he  purposely  made  a  false  move ;  the  figure 
inclined  its  head,  replaced  the  piece,  and  made  a  sign  for 
Napoleon  to  play  again.  Presently  he  again  played  false- 
ly :  this  time  the  Automaton  removed  the  offending  piece 
from  the  board,  and  played  its  own  move.  Napoleon 
was  delighted ;  and,  to  put  the  patience  of  his  taciturn 
opponent  to  a  severer  test,  he  once  more  played  incor- 
rectly, upon  which^the  Automaton  raised  its  arm,  and, 
sweeping  the  pieces  from  the  board,  declined  to  continue 
the  game." 

After  a  second  tour  of  the  leading  cities  of  Europe, 
where  it  was  received  with  unabated  enthusiasm,  in  1819 
the  Automaton  was  again  established  in  London,  under 
M.  Maelzel.  For  some  years  it  was  exhibited  in  Canada 
and  the  United  States,  and  was  finally  understood  to  have 
returned  to  New  York,  where  it  was  shown  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1845. 

Meanwhile  there  were  various  attempts  made  to  dis- 
cover the  secret.  The  ingenious  inventor  never  pretend- 
ed that  the  Automaton  itself  really  played  the  game :  on 
the  contrary,  he  distinctly  stated  that  "  the  machine  was 
a  bagatelle,  which  was  not  without  merit  in  point  of  mech- 
anism, but  that  the  effects  of  it  appeared  so  marvelous 
only  from  the  boldness  of  the  conception,  and  the  fortu- 
nate choice  of  the  methods  adopted  for  promoting  the 
illusion."  It  was  surmised  that  the  game  was  played  ei- 
ther by  a  person  inclosed  in  the  chest,  or  by  the  exhib- 
itor himself;  yet  the  chest,  being  nearly  filled  with  ma- 
chinery, did  not  appear  capable  of  accommodating  even 
a  dwarf;  nor  could  any  mechanical  communication  be- 
tween the  exhibitor  and  the  figure  be  detected.  It  was 
then  thought  to  be  influenced  by  a  magnet,  which  the 
exhibitor  disproved  by  placing  a  strong  and  well-armed 
loadstone  upon  the  machine  during  the  game,  which  did 
not  affect  the  moving  power.  The  original  conjecture, 


THE   AUTOMATON    CHESS-PLAYER.  89 

that  the  player  was  concealed  in  the  interior,  was  then 
.revived;  and  in  1789,  Mr.  J.  F.  Freyhere,  of  Dresden, 
published  a  pamphlet,  in. which  he  endeavored  to  explain 
by  colored  plates  how  the  effect  was  produced ;  and  he 
concluded  "  that  a  well-taught  boy,  very  thin  and  tall  of 
his  age  (sufficiently  so  that  he  could  be  concealed  in  a 
drawer  almost  immediately  under  the  chess-board),  agi- 
tated the  whole." 

In  an  earlier  pamphlet,  published  in  Paris  in  1785,  the 
writer  supposed  the  machine  was  put  in  moti<Bi  by  a 
dwarf,  a  famous  chess-player,  his  legs  and  thighs  being 
concealed  in  two  hollow  cylinders,  while  the  rest  of  his 
body  was  out  of  the  box,  and  hidden  by  the  robes  of  the 
figure. 

Sir  David  Brewster,  in  his  Natural  Magic,  describes 
the  secret  as  shown  in  a  pamphlet  published  anonymous- 
ly, and  the  machine  to  be  capable  of  accommodating  an 
ordinarily  -  sized  man;  and  he  explains,  in  the  clearest 
manner,  how  "  the  inclosed  player  takes  all  the  different 
positions,  and  performs  all  the  motions  which  are  neces- 
sary to  produce  the  effects  actually  observed."  Sir  Da- 
vid devotes  eight  pages  of  his  work,  with  illustrative 
wood-cuts,  to  this  explanation,  and  endeavors  to  show 
how  the  real  player  may  be  concealed  in  the  chest,  and 
partly  in  the  figure :  "  as  his  head  is  above  the  chess- 
board, he  will  see  through  the  waistcoat  of  the  figure,  as 
easily  as  through  a  veil,  the  whole  of  the  pieces  on  the 
board ;  and  he  can  easily  take  up  and  put  down  a  chess- 
man without  any  other  mechanism  than  that  of  a  string 
communicating  with  the  finger  of  the  left  hand  of  the 
figure,"  the  right  hand  being  within  the  chest,  to  keep  in 
motion  the  wheel-work  for  producing  the  noise  heard  dur- 
ing the  moves,  and  to  move  the  head,  tap  the  chest,  etc. 

Mr.  Staunton  also  maintains  that  the  chess-player  who 
directed  the  Automaton  was  really  hidden  in  the  interior ; 
that  the  machinery  so  ostentatiously  exhibited  was  a 
sham,  yet  so  contrived  that  it  would  collapse  or  expand, 
to  suit  the  exigencies  of  the  hidden  agent's  various  posi- 
tions ;  while  the  chest  was  exhibited,  he  was  in  the  fig- 
ure, and  when  the  figure,  he  was  in  the  chest.  While 
conducting  a  game,  he  sat  at  the  bottom  of  the  chest, 
with  a  small  pegged  chess-board  and  men  on  his  lap,  and 


90  THE   AUTOMATON   CHESS-PLAYEK. 

a  lighted  taper  affixed ;  within  reach  were  a  handle  by 
which  he  could  guide  the  arm  of  the  Automaton,  an  elas- 
tic spring  for  moving  its  fingers,  and  cord  in  communica- 
tion with  bellows  for  producing  the  sound  of  "  Check." 
The  most  ingenious  part  of  the  contrivance  remains  to  be 
told.  M.  Mouret,  the  celebrated  chess-player,  who  direct- 
ed the  movements  of  the  Automaton  for  some  years, 
states  that  the  concealed  player  was  seated  immediately 
under  the  chess-board  of  the  Automaton,  and  from  the 
underside,  at  every  one  of  the  sixty-four  squares,  was 
suspended  by  the  finest  silk  a  tiny  metallic  ball ;  and  as 
each  of  the  chess-men  had  a  magnet  inside,  when  it  was 
placed  upon  a  square,  it  drew  up  the  ball  beneath,  while 
the  balls  beneath  the  other  squares  remained  suspended. 
The  pieces  being  arranged,  the  Automaton  opened  the 
game ;  and  turning  the  handle  of  the  arm  of  the  figure, 
and  putting  in  motion  the  finger-springs,  he  caused  it  to 
take  up  the  piece  to  be  played,  which  was  indicated  by 
the  falling  ball,  and  when  it  was  placed  upon  a  square, 
the  ball  was  drawn  up.  He  then  repeated  the  move  on 
the  small  board  in  his  lap,  and  thus  the  game  proceeded.-* 

Thus  the  explanation  rested  until  the  publication  of 
the  Memoirs  of  Robert  Houdin,  who  therein  relates  the 
origin  and  construction  of  the  Automaton  Chess-player 
in  substance  as  follows : 

In  1769  there  fell,  fighting  in  a  revolt  at  Riga,  an  officer  named 
Worousky,  a  man  of  great  talent  and  energy,  of  short  stature,  but  well 
built.  He  had  both  thighs  shattered  by  a  cannon  ball,  but  escaped 
by  throwing  himself  into  a  hedge  behind  a  ditch.  At  nightfall  Wo- 
rousky dragged  himself  along,  with  great  difficulty,  to  the  adjacent 
house  of  Osloff,  a  physician,  whose  benevolence  was  well  known ;  and 
the  doctor,  moved  by  his  sufferings,  attended  upon  and  promised  to 
conceal  him.  His  wound  was  serious,  gangrene  set  in,  and  his  life 
could  only  be  saved  at  the  cost  of  half  his  body.  The  amputation  was 
successful,  and  Worousky  saved. 

Meanwhile,  M.  de  Kempelen,  the  celebrated  mechanician,  came  to 
Riga  to  visit  M.  Osloff,  who  confided  to  him  his  secret  of  concealing 
Worousky,  and  begged  his  aid.  Though  startled  at  the  request — for 
he  knew  that  a  reward  was  offered  for  the  insurgent  chief,  and  that 
the  act  of  humanity  he  was  about  to  assist  in  might  send  him  to  Sibe- 
ria— still,  M.  de  Kempelen,  on  seeing  Worousky's  mutilated  body,  felt 
moved  with  compassion,  and  began  contriving  some  plan  to  secure  his 
escape. 

*  Selected  and  abridged  from  the  Illustrated  London  News,  Dec. 
23,  1845. 


THE    AUTOMATON    CHESS-PLAYER.  91 

Dr.  Osloff  was  a  passionate  lover  of  chess,  and  had  played  numer- 
ous games  with  his  patient  during  his  tardy  convalescence ;  but  Wo- 
rousky  was  so  strong  at  the  game  that  the  doctor  was  always  defeat- 
ed. Then  Kempelen  joined  the  doctor  in  trying  to  defeat  the  skillful 
player,  but  it  was  of  no  use ;  Worousky  was  always  the  conqueror. 
His  superiority  gave  M.  de  Kempelen  the  idea  of  the  famous  Autom- 
aton Chess-player.  In  an  instant  his  plan  was  formed,  and  he  set  to 
work  immediately ;  and  the  most  remarkable  circumstance  is,  that 
this  wonderful  chef-d'oeuvre,  which  astonished  the  whole  world,  was  fin- 
ished within  three  months. 

M.  de  Kempelen  was  anxious  that  his"  host  should  make  the  first 
trial  of  his  Automaton ;  so  he  invited  him  to  play  a  game  on  the  10th 
of  October,  1769.  The  Automaton  represented  a  Turk  of  the  natural 
size,  wearing  the  national  costume,  and  seated  behind  a  box  of  the 
shape  of  a  chest  of  drawers.  In  the  middle  of  the  top  of  the  box  was 
a  chess-board,  with  the  pieces,  for  play. 

Prior  to  commencing  the  game,  the  artist  opened  several  doors  in 
the  chest,  and  M.  Osloff  could  see  inside  a  number  of  wheels,  pulleys, 
cylinders,  springs,  etc.,  occupying  the  larger  part.  At  the  same  time 
he  opened  a  long  drawer,  from  which  he  produced  the  chess-men  and 
a  cushion,  on  which  the  Turk  was  to  rest  his  arm.  This  examination 
ended,  the  robe  of  the  Automaton  was  raised,  and  the  interior  of  the 
body  could  also  be  inspected. 

The  doors  being  then  closed,  M.  de  Kempelen  wound  up  one  of  the 
wheels  with  a  key  which  he  inserted  in  a  hole  in  the  chest;  after 
which  the  Turk,  with  a  gentle  nod  of  salutation,  placed  his  hand  on 
one  of  the  pieces,  raised  it,  deposited  it  on  another  square,  and  laid 
his  arm  on  the  cushion  before  him.  The  inventor  had  stated  that,  as 
the  Automaton  could  not  speak,  it  would  signify  check  to  the  king  by 
three  nods,  and  to  the  queen  by  two. 

The  doctor  moved  in  his  turn,  and  waited  patiently  till  his  adver- 
sary, whose  movements  had  all  the  dignity  of  the  Sultan,  had  moved. 
The  game,  though  slow  at  first,  soon  grew  animated,  and  the  doctor 
found  he  had  to  deal  with  a  tremendous  opponent ;  for,  in  spite  of  all 
his  efforts  to  defeat  the  figure,  his  game  was  growing  quite  desperate. 
It  is  true,  though,  that  for  some  minutes  past  the  doctor's  attention 
had  appeared  to  be  distracted,  and  one  idea  seemed  to  occupy  him. 
But,  while  hesitating  whether  he  should  impart  his  thoughts  to  his 
friend,  the  figure  gave  three  nods.  The  game  was  over. 

"By  Jove!"  the  loser  said,  with  a  tinge  of  vexation,  which  the 
sight  of  the  inventor's  smiling  face  soon  dispelled,  "if  I  were  not  cer- 
tain that  Worousky  is  at  this  moment  in  bed,  I  should  believe  I  had 
been  playing  with  him.  His  head  alone  is  capable  of  inventing  such 
a  checkmate.  And  besides,"  the  doctor  said,  looking  fixedly  at  M. 
de  Kempelen,  "can  you  tell  me  why  your  Automaton  plays  with  the 
left  hand,  just  like  Worousky?"  (The  Automaton  Chess-player  al- 
ways used  the  left  hand — a  defect  falsely  attributed  to  the  careless- 
ness of  the  constructor. ) 

The  mechanician  began  laughing,  and  at  length  confessed  to  his 
friend  that  he  had  really  been  playing  with  Worousky. 

"But  where  the  deuce  have  you  put  him,  then?"  the  doctor  said, 
looking  round  to  try  and  discover  his  opponent. 


92  THE    AUTOMATON    CHESS-PLAYER. 

The  inventor  laughed  heartily. 

"Well,  do  you  not  recognize  me?"  the  Turk  exclaimed,  holding 
out  his  left  hand  to  the  doctor  in  reconciliation,  while  Kempelen  raised 
the  robe  and  displayed  the  poor  cripple  stowed  away  in  the  body  of  the 
Automaton. 

M.  Osloff  could  no  longer  keep  his  countenance,  and  he  joined  the 
others  in  the  laughter.  But  he  was  the  first  to  stop,  for  he  wanted  an 
explanation. 

"  But  how  do  you  manage  to  render  Worousky  invisible  ?" 

M.  de  Kempelen  then  explained  how  he  concealed  the  living  au- 
tomaton before  it  entered  the  Turk's  body. 

"  See  here,"  he  said,  opening  the  chest;  "  these  wheels,  pulleys,  and 
cranks,  occupying  a  portion  of  the  chest,  are  only  a  deception.  The 
frames  that  support  them  are  hung  on  hinges,  and  can  be  turned  back 
to  leave  space  for  the  player,  while  you  were  examining  the  body  of 
the  Automaton. 

"When  this  inspection  was  ended,  and  as  soon  as  the  robe  was  al- 
lowed to  fall,  Worousky  entered  the  Turk's  body  we  have  just  ex- 
amined, and,  while  I  was  showing  you  the  box  and  the  machinery,  he 
was  taking  his  time  to  pass  his  arms  and  hands  into  those  of  the  figure. 
You  can  understand  that,  owing  to  the  size  of  the  neck,  which  is  hid- 
den by  the  broad  and  enormous  collar,  he  can  easily  pass  his  head  into 
this  mask,  and  see  the  chess-board.  I  must  add,  that  when  I  pretend 
to  wind  up  the  machine,  it  is  only  to  drown  the  sound  of  Worousky's 
movements." 

M.  Houdin  relates  that  the  mutilated  Pole  once  had  the 
audacity,  in  his  clockwork  case,  to  visit  St.  Petersburg, 
and  play  a  game  of  chess  with  the  Empress  Catharine, 
against  whom  he  had  revolted. 

It  is  hard  to  reconcile  these  conflicting  statements,  un- 
less, having  allowed  Houdin's  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
Automaton  to  be  correct,  we  consider  the  other  narratives 
to  explain  the  modes  by  which  the  Automaton  was  work- 
ed after  Worousky  had  ceased  to  be  the  prime  mover  of 
this  extraordinary  deception. 

Substitutes  for  the  natural  limbs  have  been  constructed 
with  great  success.  In  1845,  Magendie  described  to  the 
French  Academy  a  pair  of  artificial  arms,  the  invention 
of  M.  Van  Petersen,  with  one  of  which  a  mutilated  soldier 
raised  a  full  glass  to  his  mouth,  and  drank  its  contents 
without  spilling  a  drop  of  the  liquor ;  he  also  picked  up 
a  pin,  a  sheet  of  paper,  etc.  Each  arm  and  hand,  with 
its  articulations,  weighs  less  than  a  pound ;  and  a  sort 
of  stays  is  fixed  round  the  person,  and  from  these  are 
cords  made  of  catgut,  which  act  upon  the  articulations, 
according  to  the  motion  given  to  the  natural  stump. 


NAVIGATION  OF  THE  AIE:   ADVENTURES 
WITH  THE  BALLOON. 

THE  idea  of  constructing  a  machine  which  should  en- 
able us  to  rise  into,  and  sail  through  the  air  (hence  the 
term  aeronaut),  would  seem  to  have  occupied  the  human 
mind  even  in  ancient  times ;  but  it  was  never  realized 
until  the  beginning  of  the  present,  or  the  close  of  the  last 
century. 

The  notion  of  imitating  the  flying  of  birds  is  very  an- 
cient. Passing  over  the  winged  gods,  the  stories  of 
Abaris,  Daedalus,  and  the  like,  which,  with  many  others, 
might  have  been  purely  imaginative,  and  not  traditions 
of  any  previous  reality,  we  come  to  Strabo's  account  of 
the  Capriobalae,  a  Scythian  people,  who  (so  the  word  has 
been  foolishly  interpreted)  raised  themselves  by  smoke, 
or,  more  properly,  heated  air.  The  Carolinians  are  also 
mentioned  by  the  Jesuit  Cantova  as  having  a  fable  about 
a  female  deity  who  raised  herself  to  heaven  by  the  smoke 
of  a  great  fire.  We  may  likewise  mention  the  wooden 
pigeon  of  Archytas,  which  had  air  inclosed  in  it,  and  which 
Lucian  professes  to  have  seen  raise  itself  in  the  air ;  the 
fable  in  British  mythology  of  Bladud,  the  father  of  the 
well-known  Lear,  which  resembles  that  of  Da3dalus ;  and 
many  others,  all  of  which  serve  to  show  that  the  notion 
of  the  possibility  of  raising  a  man  or  a  machine  was  very 
widely  extended  in  the  ancient  world.  Roger  Bacon 
says  that  there  certainly  is  a  flying  machine,  of  which  he 
knows  the  name  of  the  inventor,  but  which  he  has  neither 
seen  himself,  nor  does  he  know  any  one  who  has.  Van 
Helmont  and  others  proved  the  possibility  of  flying  by 
very  eloquent  discourses,  which  convinced  all  hearers — 
but  not  their  posterity.  Sometimes,  however,  the  evi- 
dence of  these  ancient  wonders  is  strangely  shaken  by 
historical  fact ;  as  in  the  case  of  Regiomontanus's  wood- 
en eagle,  which  flew  out  of  Nuremberg  to  meet  Charles 
V. ;  for,  although  this  statement  is  testified  by  Sextus  of 


96  BISHOP    WILKINS    ON   FLYING. 

Ratisbon,  Kircher,  Porta,  Schott,  Gassendi,  Lana,  Ramus, 
and  Bishop  Wilkins,  they  have  overlooked  the  fact  that 
Regiomontanus  died  twenty-five  years  before  Charles  V. 
was  born ! 

The  Jesuit  Francis  Lana  (A.D.  1670),  among  many  other 
projects,  has  given,  perhaps,  the  earliest  idea  of  a  real 
Balloon,  as  we  have  defined  it,  and  his  first  step  was  pure- 
ly theoretic.  He  proposes  to  raise  a  vessel  by  means  of 
metal  balls,  strong  enough,  when  expanded,  to  resist  the 
pressure  of  the  external  air,  but  at  the  same  time  so  thin 
as,  in  the  same  circumstances,  to  be  lighter  than  their 
bulk  of  air.  Had  the  good  father  made  the  experiment, 
he  would  have  found  that  strength  to  resist  the  external 
air  is  incompatible  with  the  necessary  degree  of  thinness 
in  the  material.  Still,  there  was  one  avenue  to  the  object 
of  pursuit,  to  which  the  common  and  well-known  princi- 
ples of  hydrostatics  appeared  to  direct  the  way,  though 
it  had  been  of  all  others  the  most  neglected :  this  was  the 
obvious  one  that  any  body  which  is  specifically,  or  bulk 
for  bulk,  lighter  than  common  air,  will  rise  and  swim  in 
it,  and  submit  to  the  action  of  the  wind ;  therefore,  if  any 
body  could  be  found  which  was  in  any  considerable  de- 
gree lighter  than  air,  by  making  it  of  a  sufficient  size,  a 
person  might  attach  himself  to  it,  and  float  along  with 
it.  Another  century,  however,  elapsed  before  this  was 
accomplished. 

Bishop  Wilkins  (who  lived  from  1614  to  1672)  was  an  early  disciple 
of  this  art.  In  his  Discovery  of  a  New  World,  or  That  the  World 
may  be  a  Moon,  one  of  his  propositions  is,  "  That  'tis  possible  for  some 
of  our  posterity  to  find  out  a  conveyance  to  this  other  world,"  which 
can  not  seem  more  incredible  to  us  than  did  the  invention  of  ships : 
u  So  bold  was  he,  who  in  a  ship  so  frail 

First  ventured  on  the  treacherous  waves  to  sail." 

The  bishop  agrees  with  Kepler,  that  whenever  the  art  is  invented  by 
which  a  man  may  be  conveyed  some  twenty  miles  high,  or  there- 
abouts, it  is  not  altogether  improbable  that  some  other  art  may  enable 
him  to  fly  to  the  moon ;  and  supposing  that  he  could  fly  as  fast  and 
as  long  as  the  swiftest  bird,  were  he  to  keep  on  in  a  straight  line,  and 
fly  1000  miles  a  day,  he  would  not  arrive  at  the  moon  under  180  days, 
or  half  a  year.  As  for  the  means  of  flying,  Wilkins  points  to  angels 
pictured  with  wings,  which  Mercury  and  Dadalus  are  feigned  to  have 
had ;  that  if  there  be,  as  Marco  Polo  says,  a  roc  in  Madagascar 
"which  can  scoop  up  a  horse  and  his  rider,  or  an  elephant,"  then  a 
man  may  ride  up  to  the  moon,  as  Ganymede  does  upon  an  eagle.  Or 
the  bishop  affirms  it  possible  to  make  a  Flying  Chariot  large  enough 


FLYING   MACHINE.  97 

to  carry  up  several  men,  with  their  food  and  luggage,  on  the  same 
principle  by  which  Archytas  made  his  wooden  dove,  and  Regiomon- 
tanus  his  wooden  eagle.  The  bishop  also  devotes  a  chapter  of  his 
Mathematical  Magic  to  solving  the  difficulties  that  seem  to  oppose  the 
possibility  of  a  Flying  Chariot,  and  concludes  with  suggesting  the 
wings  of  the  bat  as  preferable  to  those  of  a  bird,  gravely  adding  that 
the  bat's  wings  are  most  easily  imitated,  and  perhaps  Nature  intended 
by  them  to  direct  us  in  such  experiments.  Wilkins  was  also  an  early 
advocate  of  the  "pleasant  uses"  of  heated  air ;  in  his  Mathematical 
Magic  he  minutely  describes  the  moving  of  sails  in  a  chimney,  as  in 
the  smoke-jack;  and  he  adds  that  Ctesibius  "made  by  this  kind  of 
motion  his  representations  of  living  creatures,  whether  birds  or  beasts." 

Leaving  these  phantasies,  we  reach  some  practical  il- 
lustrations of  the  art.  In  1709,  Gusman,  a  Portuguese 
friar,  constructed  a  machine  in  the  form  of  a  bird,  with 
tubes  and  bellows  to  supply  the  wings  with  air ;  he  was 
rewarded  with  a  liberal  pension,  but  his  machine  failed. 
Gusman,  however,  was  not  discouraged,  for  in  1736  he 
constructed  a  wicker  basket  7  feet  in  diameter,  and  cov- 
ered with  paper,  which  rose  to  the  height  of  200  feet  in 
the  air,  the  success  of  which  experiment  procured  for  the 
inventor  the  reputation  of  being  a  sorcerer. 


M.  Laurent' rf  Bird  Machine. 


As  air  was  considered  the  lightest  of  all  things,  there 
appeared  little  reason  to  believe  that  the  discovery  of 
flying  would  be  made,  when  in  1755  Joseph  Gallien,  of 
Avignon,  in  a  treatise,  recommended  the  employment  of 
a  bag  of  cloth  or  leather,  filled  with  air  lighter  than  that 

E 


98  HYDROGEN  GAS  DISCOVERED. 

of  the  atmosphere.  Eleven  years  later,  in  1766,  this  de- 
sideratum was  supplied  by  Mr.  Cavendish  announcing  to 
the  world  that  the  gas  now  known  as  hydrogen,  but  at 
that  time  called  inflammable  air,  was  at  least  seven  times 
lighter  than  common  air.  This  important  discovery  led 
Dr.  Black  to  suggest  in  his  lectures  that  if  a  bladder  suf- 
ficiently light  and  thin  were  filled  with  this  air,  it  would 
form  a  mass  much  lighter  than  the  same  bulk  of  atmos- 
pheric air,  and  that  it  would  float  in  the  latter.  Dr. 
Black,  however,  did  not  pursue  the  subject  farther ;  and 
it  rested  for  nearly  twenty  years,  until  Cavallo,  reflecting 
on  Dr.  Black's  remarks,  in  1782  made  several  experiments 
to  elevate  a  bag  filled  with  hydrogen  gas:  he  tried  the 
largest  and  thinnest  bladders,  but  they  were  found  some- 
what too  heavy  for  the  purpose.  He  also  tried  bags  of 
the  finest  China  paper,  of  such  a  size  that,  had  it  been 
possible  to  fill  them  with  the  gas,  their  ascent  would 
have  been  certain ;  but  the  experiments  failed,  for,  though 
common  air  would  not  pass  through  this  paper,  hydrogen 
gas  passed  through  it  like  water  through  a  sieve.  In  short, 
Cavallo  was  completely .  successful  only  in  filling  soap- 
bubbles  with  the  gas,  which  was  easily  done  by  pressing 
small  quantities  of  hydrogen  out  of  a  bladder,  while  a 
small  pipe  was  immersed  in  a  solution  of  soap  and  water ; 
these  bubbles  rapidly  ascended  in  the  ambient  air,  and 
they  may  be  considered  as  the  first  inflammable  air-bal- 
loons that  were  ever  exhibited.  Cavallo  read  to  the 
Royal  Society  the  paper  in  which  he  gave  an  account  of 
his  experiments,  on  the  20th  of  June,  1782. 

Here  it  should  be  observed  that,  although  the  art  of 
flying  had  been  diligently  studied,  or  at  least  discussed, 
for  centuries,  the  exceedingly  simple  contrivance  we  shall 
presently  describe  had  not  been  tried,  or  even  mentioned, 
by  any  of  the  projectors,  some  of  whom  were  men  of  in- 
genuity. Nothing  can  set  in  a  stronger  light  the  antip- 
athy of  the  earlier  moderns  to  experimental  research. 
And  it 'is  no  small  honor  to  the  Montgolfiers,  that  the 
hint  given  by  Lana,  together  with  the  every-day  exper- 
iment of  soap-bubbles,  and  the  like,  should  have  remain- 
ed without  results  to  their  time. 

"We  consider"  (says  an  able  writer)  "him  the  in- 
ventor of  the  balloon  who  raised  a  mass  of  solid  substance 


THE   MONTGOLFIEES.  99 

to  some  considerable  height  in  the  atmosphere.  But  if 
we  were  to  take  the  license  which  is  so  frequent,  of  dis- 
puting the  right  of  an  inventor  on  account  of  some  ex- 
periments containing  a  principle  common  with  his  own, 
we  might  say  that  this  machine  has  been  invented  from 
time  immemorial  in  the  ascent  of  soap-bubbles;  or  we 
might  cite  Candido  Buono,  who  made  one  scale  of  a  bal- 
ance ascend  by  rarefying  with  a  red-hot  iron  the  air  be- 
neath it."  We  have  seen  how  Cavendish  discovered  the 
gas  seven-fold  lighter  than  air ;  how  Black  took  up  its 
application,  but  then  halted ;  and  how  Cavallo  followed, 
but  could  not  succeed  in  raising,  by  means  of  hydrogen, 
any  thing  heavier  than  a  soap-bubble.  AYe  shall  next 
show  that,  natural  as  it  might  appear  to  use  hydrogen  for 
the  purpose,  the  experiment  succeeded  only  with  a  very 
different  agent.  From  this  point  practical  aerostation 
commences. 

In  the  last-mentioned  year,  1782,  but  unknown  to  the 
English  philosophers,  two  brothers,  Stephen  and  Joseph 
de  Montgolfier,  paper  manufacturers  at  Annonay,  about 
thirty-six  miles  from  Lyons,  formed  a  scheme  which  led 
in  a  short  time  to  the  practice  of  aerostation  on  a  large 
scale.  They  had  both  studied  natural  philosophy  and 
chemistry,  and  their  business  gave  them  facilities  for  pro- 
curing large  masses  of  light  envelopes,  so  that  we  owe 
the  invention  of  balloons  to  one  of  two  accidents,  either 
to  that  of  philosophers  being  paper-makers,  or  to  that  of 
paper-makers  being  philosophers.  Stephen  Montgolfier 
is  said  to  have  derived  the  first  idea  from  the  accidental 
circumstance  of  the  paper  cover  of  a  conical  sugar-loaf 
which  he  had  flung  into  the  fire  becoming  inflated  with 
smoke,  and  remaining  suspended  in  the  chimney.  Struck 
with  the  notion  of  confining  something  lighter  than  air 
in  a  recipient  as  the  means  of  making  the  latter  ascend, 
the  Montgolfiers  tried  this  method  at  about  the  same  pe- 
riod as  M.  Cavallo,  by  confining  hydrogen  in  paper.  They 
succeeded  to  some  extent ;  but  the  gas  so  soon  escaped 
through  the  paper  that  they  abandoned  the  idea  of  any 
thing  like  perpetual  elevation  by  means  of  it.  They  next 
thought  that,  as  it  was  supposed  the  elevation  of  the 
clouds  was  caused  by  the  presence  of  electric  matter,  and 
as  it  seemed  to  them  from  experiments  that  electrified 


100  £ 

bodies  were  diminished  in  weight,  it  might  be  possible 
to  raise  a  surface  of  great  extent,  in  proportion  to  its 
specific  gravity,  by  means  of  electricity.  After  trying 
various  methods,  they  applied  fire  underneath  a  balloon, 
not  to  rarefy  the  inclosed  air,  but  "  as  well  to  increase 
the  layer  of  electric  fluid  upon  the  vapor  in  the  vessel  as 
to  divide  the  vapor  into  smaller  molecules,  and  dilate  the 
gas  in  which  they  are  suspended."  Thus  they  thought 
they  were  imitating  a  cloud  by  electrifying  the  gases  and 
vapors  contained  in  the  atmosphere. 

The  first  experiment  was  made  at  Avignon  by  Stephen 
Montgolfier.  He  prepared  a  bag  of  silk  in  the  shape  of 
a  parallelopipedon ;  its  capacity  was  about  forty  cubic 
feet,  and  he  applied  to  its  aperture  burning  paper,  and 
inflated  the  bag  with  a  kind  of  cloud,  when  the  bag  as- 
cended rapidly  to  the  ceiling  of  the  room.  This  was  re- 
ferred to  the  electric  theory,  as  above ;  but  in  the  report 
made  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences  (December,  1783)  by 
the  commission  appointed  to  investigate  Montgolfier' s  in- 
vention, the  inventors  are  spoken  of  as  simply  rarefying 
the  air  contained  in  the  balloon,  when  they  had  probably 
arrived  at  the  correct  view  of  the  subject.  Their  first 
public  experiment  was  made  at  Annonay,  June  5,  1783. 
At  the  appointed  time,  nothing  was  seen  in  the  public 
place  of  the  town  but  immense  folds  of  paper,  .100  feet 
in  circumference,  and  fixed  to  a  nearly  spherical  wooden 
frame,  the  whole  weighing  about  500  Ibs.,  and  contain- 
ing 22,000  cubic  feet,  French  measure.  It  was  suspend- 
ed, in  a  flaccid  state,  on  a  pole  thirty-five  feet  high :  straw 
and  chopped  hay  were  burnt  underneath  the  opening  at 
the  bottom,  the  heated  air  from  which  entered ;  the  mass 
gradually  assumed  the  form  of  a  large  globe,  and  ascend- 
ed with  such  velocity,  that  in  less  than  ten  minutes  it 
reached  the  elevation  of  6000  feet.  A  breeze  carried  it 
in  a  horizontal  direction  to  the  distance  of  7668  feet, 
wThen  it  fell  gently  on  the  ground.  Machines  on  this 
principle  were  called  Montgolfiers,  to  distinguish  them 
from  the  hydrogen  balloons  which  were  made  immediate- 
ly afterward. 

The  news  of  this  phenomenon  flew  to  Paris,  where  it 
immediately  produced  an  excitement  almost  unheard  of 
before.  That  hydrogen  could  not  have  been  used  was 


THE    FIRST    AERONAUTS. 


101 


The  first  Montsolfier. 


•evident  from  the  description  given,  namely,  that  it  was 
half  as  heavy  as  air.  On  August  23  the  experiment  was 
resumed  at  Versailles  with  hydrogen  inclosed  in  lutestring 
which  had  been  dipped  in  a  solution  of  India-rubber.  The 
gas  was  obtained  in  the  usual  manner  by  the  action  of  di- 
luted sulphuric  acid  on  iron  filings;  but  the  machine  was 
not  filled  until  August  26,  when  it  was  allowed  to  rise 
100  feet,  to  which  height  it  was  confined  by  ropes.  Next 
day  the  balloon  was  conveyed  to  the  Champ  de  Mars, 
where  it  was  set  free  in  the  presence  of  an  enormous 
crowd.  It  -fell  five  leagues  from  Paris,  after  being  about 
a  quarter  of  an  hour  in  the  air. 

Meanwhile  Joseph  Montgolfier  arrived  in  Paris,  where 
he  exhibited  one  of  his  balloons  on  the  12th  of  September ; 
and  on  the  19th,  in  front  of  the  Palace  of  Versailles. 
The  interest  attached  to  the  mere  ascent  of  the  balloon 
alone  here  ceases.  Various  repetitions  of  the  experi- 
ment were  made  at  Paris  previously  to  the  time  when 
men  trusted  themselves  to  this  conveyance.  The  first 
aerial  voyagers  were  a  sheep,  a  cock,  and  a  duck,  who 
were  sent  up  on  September  19,  and  came  down  safe. 
Human  life  was  not,  however,  trusted  to  a  balloon  till  the 


102 


THE   FIRST   AERONAUTS. 


experiment  of  holding  the  machine  with  ropes  had  been 
made.  In  this  manner  M.  Pilatre  de  Rozier  ascended 
100  feet  on  the  5th  of  October,  and  324  feet  on  the  19th, 
in  a  spheroidal  balloon  seventy-five  feet  high. 


De  Rozier1  s  Balloon. 


The  first  persons  who  offered  to  leave  the  earth  entire- 
ly were  the  Marquis  d'Arlandes  and  M.  de  Rozier,  in  a 
Montgolfier,  from  the  Chateau  de  la  Muette,  near  Passy, 
November  21,  1783.  Their  balloon,  magnificently  dec- 
orated, was  terminated  below  by  a  circular  gallery  for 
the  aeronauts ;  inside  a  grate  was  suspended  within  their 
reach,  so  that  they  could,  during  the  voyage,  feed  the 
fire  in  it  with  straw,  a  supply  of  which  they  took  with 
them.  The  sky  was  loaded  with  heavy  clouds,  driven 
about  by  irregular  winds.  After  a  first  trial  which  had 
nearly  proved  fatal  to  the  aeronauts,  the  balloon  was 
again  filled,  and  a  provision  of  straw  taken  up  to  supply 
the  fire.  The  machine  first  mounted  with  a  steady  and 
majestic  pace  to  more  than  3000  feet,  and  traversed  the 
whole  extent  of  Paris,  intercepting  the  body  of  the  sun, 
and  giving  to  the  gazers  on  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame, 


THE    FIRST    AERONAUTS.  103 

for  a  few  seconds,  the  spectacle  of  a  total  eclipse.  When 
the  balloon  had  reached  so  high  that  the  objects  on  earth 
were  not  distinguishable,  the  Marquis  d'Arlandes  was 
anxious  to  descend ;  but  his  companion  still  kept  feeding 
the  fire.  At  last,  on  hearing  some  cracks  from  the  top 
of  the  balloon,  and  observing  holes  burning  in  the  sides, 
the  marquis  became  alarmed,  and  applying  wet  sponges 
to  stop  the  progress  of  the  burning,  he  compelled  M.  de 
Rozier  to  desist.  As  they  now  descended  too  fast,  M. 
d'Arlandes  threw  fresh  straw  on  the  fire,  in  order  to 
gain  such  elevation  as  would  enable  them  to  clear  the 
lofty  buildings ;  and  after  a  journey  of  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  minutes,  they  safely  alighted  beyond  the  Boulevards, 
having  described  a  track  of  six  miles,  and  the  balloon 
being  quite  empty  and  flattened. 

The  next  voyage — the  first  made  in  a  hydrogen  bal- 
loon— was  that  of  MM.  Charles  and  Robert  at  sunset,  on 
December  1,  1783,  from  the  Tuileries.  After  coming 
down,  M.  Charles  reascended  alone,  and  was  soon  near- 
ly two  miles  high :  he  saw  the  sun  rise  again,  and  he 
says,  "  I  was  the  only  illuminated  object,  all  the  rest  of 
nature  being  plunged  in  shadow."  A  small  balloon, 
launched  by  Montgolfier  just  before  the  ascent,  was 
found  to  have  run  a  totally  opposite  course,  which  first 
gave  rise  to  the  suspicion  of  different  directions  in  the 
currents  of  air  at  different  heights. 

The  third  voyage — from  Lyons,  January  19,  1784 — 
was  made  in  the  largest  Montgolfier  yet  constructed 
(102  feet  diameter,  126  feet  high),  by  seven  persons, 
among  whom  were  J.  Montgolfier  and  M.  de  Rozier.  A 
rent  in  the  balloon  caused  it  to  descend  with  great  ve- 
locity, but  no  one  was  hurt. 

The  mania  for  aerial  voyaging  soon  passed  from  France 
to  Italy;  and  the  Chevalier  Paul  Andreani  constructed 
a  spherical  balloon  about  sixty-eight  feet  diameter,  made 
of  linen,  lined  with  fine  paper,  and  provided  with  a  bra- 
ziere,  or  fireplace.  It  was  inflated  in  fifteen  minutes ; 
and  on  February  25,  1784,  the  chevalier  and  two  assist- 
ants ascended  from  Monsucco,  near  Milan,  and  after  re- 
maining up  twenty  minutes,  returned  there  in  safety. 

Three  days  previous  to  the  above,  February  22,  a  small 
balloon,  launched  by  itself  from  Sandwich,  crossed  the 


104  FIRST   BALLOON   IN   ENGLAND. 

Channel,  and  was  found  nine  miles  from  Lisle,  having 
traveled  above  thirty  miles  an  hour. 

On  April  25,  1784,  MM.  de  Morveau  and  Bertrand 
ascended  in  a  balloon  1300  feet  at  Dijon,  and  experi- 
mented with  effect  with  oars. 

On  May  20,  1784,  M.  Montgolfier,  two  other  gentle- 
men, and  four  ladies,  ascended,  the  balloon  being  con- 
fined by  ropes. 

In  September,  1784,  the  Duke  of  Orleans  (Louis  Phi- 
>e),  accompanied  by  Messrs.  Robert,  ascended  in  a 

loon  furnished  with  oars  and  rudder ;  to  this  a  small 
balloon  was  attached,  for  the  purpose  of  being  inflated 
with  bellows,  and  thus  supplying  the  means  of  descent 
without  waste  of  the  hydrogen  gas.  At  1400  feet  high 
they  encountered  a  thunder-storm  and  whirlwind ;  by 
throwing  out  ballast,  they  rose  to  6000  feet,  when  the 
heat  of  the  sun  caused  so  great  an  expansion  of  the  gas 
that  a  rupture  in  the  balloon  was  feared.  The  duke 
pierced  the  silk  with  his  sword  in  several  places,  and 
thus  let  out  the  gas ;  and  having  narrowly  escaped  fall- 
ing into  a  lake,  the  aeronauts  descended  unhurt,  after  an 
excursion  of  five  hours. 

Hitherto  the  several  balloon  experiments  had  been  con- 
fined to  the  Continent,  but  now  reached  our  country. 

The  first  balloon  experiment  in  England  was  made  by 
Count  Zambeccari.  On  November  25, 1783,  a  balloon 
of  oiled  silk,  richly  gilt,  and  filled  with  hydrogen  gas, 
ascended  from  the  Artillery  Ground,  Moorfields ;  it  was 
found  forty-eight  miles  from  London,  near  Petworth. 
At  the  end  of  the  same  year,  Mr.  Sadler  sent  up  a  hydro- 
gen balloon  from  Oxford.  About  the  same  time  (De- 
cember 25th),  Mr.  Boulton,  the  partner  of  James  Watt, 
constructed  a  balloon,  to  which  a  match  and  serpent 
were  attached,  that  the  gas  might  explode  in  the  air. 
The  object  was  to  ascertain  whether  the  reverberation 
of  thunder  is  caused  by  echo  or  by  successive  explosions ; 
but  the  point  remained  unsettled,  owing  to  the  shouting 
of  the  people. 

Count  Zambeccari  maybe  considered  as  among  the  most 
unfortunate  of  the  early  voyagers.  In  an  ascent  from 
Ancona,  he  was  driven  for  many  hours  over  the  Adriatic 
Sea,  until  picked  up  by  a  bark ;  and  in  another  journey, 


BALLOONING    IN    SCOTLAND. 


105 


from  near  Bologna,  in  his  descent,  the  car,  by  the  upset- 
ting of  a  lamp  and  spirit  of  wine,  took  fire,  and  burnt  the 
clothes  of  the  count  and  his  companion  ;  the  balloon  fell 
into  the  Adriatic,  twenty-five  miles  distant  from  the  Ital- 
ian coast.  The  half-burnt  car  sank,  but  Zambeccari  held 
fast  by  the  ropes  of  the  balloon,  though  immersed  in  the 
water  to  his  neck.  By  means  of  a  bit  of  glass  he  detach- 
ed a  rope  from  the  bag,  and  with  it  fastened  his  body  to 
the  machine.  In  this  situation  he  floated  on  the  water 
for  some  hours,  the  balloon  being  still  inflated.  At  length, 
in  the  evening,  the  count  was  taken  up  by  some  fisher- 
men, who,  in  attempting  to  seize  the  balloon,  cut  the 
ropes,  when  it  rose  and  took  its  course  toward  the  Turk- 
ish coast. 

In  Scotland,  the  earliest  attempts  at  aerostation  em- 
anated from  a  chemist  at  Edinburgh,  Mr.  Scott,  who,  on 
March  12,  1784,  let  off  from  Heriot's  Gardens  a  balloon, 
which  was  taken  up  twenty  miles  from  Edinburgh. 
About  the  same  time,  various  balloons  were  let  off  from 
other  places  in  Scotland ;  one  launched  from  the  Observ- 
atory of  Aberdeen  went  thirty-eight  miles  in  half  an  hour. 


The  first  Ascension  on  Horseback. 

E2 


106  "THE  EDINBURGH  PIKE-BALLOON." 

By  a  singular  coincidence,  on  the  above  day,  Philip 
Astley,  the  celebrated  horse-rider,  and  founder  of  the 
Amphitheatre,  launched  an  aerostatic  globe  (or  balloon) 
in  St.  George's  Fields ;  it  was  afterward  found  at  Fa- 
versham,  forty-seven  miles  distant. 

In  the  same  year  Mr.  J.  Tytler,  another  chemist  at  Ed- 
inburgh, had  constructed  a  balloon  on  the  Montgolfier 
principle,  and  exhibited  it  as  "the  Edinburgh  Fire-bal- 
loon." It  was  40  feet  high,  and  30  feet  in  diameter.  On 
August  27  he  ascended  with  this  balloon  350  feet;  but, 
as  no  furnace  was  taken  up  with  it  to  maintain  the  sup- 
ply of  heated  air,  Tytler  soon  descended,  with  the  triple 
fame  of  being  the  first  native  of  Great  Britain  who 
achieved  an  aerial  ascent;  of  having  accomplished  the 
first  aerial  voyage  in  these  realms ;  and,  with  one  excep- 
tion, the  only  person  who  ascended  in  Great  Britain  by 
the  agency  of  atmospheric  air  rarefied  by  artificial  heat. 
Nevertheless,  the  merit  of  the  first  aerial  voyage  in  Great 
Britain  was  long  ascribed  to  Lunardi,  whereas  he  did  not 
ascend  till  September  15th  following.  From  an  admis- 
sion ticket  in  the  British  Museum,  Ty tier's  balloon  ap- 
pears to  have  been  constructed  by  M.  W.  Brodie ;  and 
the  engraving  represents  it  in  the  shape  of  a  cask,  hoop- 
ed, of  varnished  linen  in  eight  pieces;  the  car,  provided 
with  a  pair  of  wings  or  sails,  being  suspended  by  eight 
large  cords. 

The  exception  above  referred  to  was  the  ascent  of  Mr. 
Sneath,  in  a  balloon  of  his  own  construction,  from  Bleak 
Hill,  near  Mansfield,  on  the  night  of  May  24,  1837  :  after 
being  in  the  air  two  hours,  the  balloon  descended ;  but 
Mr.  Sneath,  fearing  it  might  be  destroyed  if  he  quitted  it, 
remained  there  till  aid  arrived  in  the  morning. 

On  June  4,  1784,  Madame  Thible,  the  first  female  aero- 
naut, and  possibly  the  only  woman  who  has  ascended  in 
a  fire-balloon,  did  so  in  a  Montgolfier,  from  Lyons,  in 
company  with  M.  Fleuraud,  in  the  presence  of  the  court, 
and  of  Gustavus,  King  of  Sweden,  then  traveling  as  Count 
Haga.  Madame  Thible's  intrepidity  was  soon  parallel- 
ed ;  for  in  the  following  year,  June  29, 1785,  the  first  En- 
glish female  aeronaut,  Mrs.  Sage,  ascended  in  a  balloon. 

The  first  aerial  voyage  in  England  was  made  by  Vin- 
centio  Lunardi,  accompanied  by  a  cat,  a  dog,  and  a  pigeon : 


EARLY   BALLOON    VOYAGES.  107 

be  started  from  the  Artillery  Ground,  and  landed  at  Stan- 
don,  near  Ware. 

On  January  7,  1785,  Messrs.  Blanchard  and  Jefferies 
crossed  the  English  Channel  in  an  inflammable  air-bal- 
loon constructed  by  the  former  gentleman.  They  rose 
from  near  Shakspeare's  Cliff,  at  Dover ;  but  the  weight 
being  too  great  for  the  power  of  the  balloon,  they  rapid- 
ly descended.  They  threw  out  ballast  from  time  to 
time,  but  without  success ;  next  they  threw  out  a  parcel 
of  books,  anchors,  and  cords,  but  ineffectually ;  and  as 
the  balloon  approached  the  sea,  the  aeronauts  threw  away 
their  clothes,  and,  fastening  themselves  to  slings,  pre- 
pared to  cut  away  the  boat  as  a  last  resource.  Calais 
was  now  distinctly  seen  at  a  distance  of  about  four  miles 
in  the  direction  of  the  wind ;  and  the  balloon  rising  quick- 
ly, they  at  length  descended  in  safety  in  the  forest  of 
Guisnes. 

The  longest  and  most  interesting  voyage  which  was 
performed  about  this  time  was  that  of  Messrs.  Roberts 
and  Hullin,  from  Paris,  in  a  balloon  rilled  with  heated  air. 
Its  diameter  was  27f  feet,  and  its  length  46f  feet,  and  it 
was  made  to  float  with  the  longest  part  parallel  to  the 
horizon,  with  a  boat  nearly  17  feet  long  attached  to  a- net 
that  went  over  it  as  far  as  the  middle.  To  the  boat  were 
annexed  wings,  or  oars,  in  the  form  of  an  umbrella.  At 
12  o'clock  they  ascended,  and  descended  at  40  minutes 
past  6,  near  Arras,  in  Artois.  By  working  the  oars  they 
accelerated  their  course ;  but  the  current  of  air  was  uni- 
form from  the  height  of  600  to  4200  feet.  In  their  voy- 
age of  150  miles  they  heard  two  claps  of  thunder;  the 
thermometer  fell  from  77°  to  59°,  and  condensed  the  air 
in  the  balloon  so  as  to  make  it  descend  very  low.  From 
experiments,  they  concluded  that  they  were  able,  by  the 
use  of  the  two  oars,  to  deviate  from  the  direction  of  the 
wind  about  22°. 

On  June  15, 1785,  M.  de  Rozier  and  M. Remain  ascend- 
ed from  Boulogne  in  a  Montgolfier,  with  the  intention 
of  crossing  the  Channel.  This  machine  was  a  sort  of 
double  balloon,  one  inflated  with  hydrogen  gas ;  below  it 
was  suspended  a  fire-balloon,  and  between  them  were, 
sails.  In  a  short  time  the  upper  balloon  was  seen  to  be 
rapidly  expanding,  while  the  aeronauts  tried  to  facilitate 


108 


BALLOONS    IN   MILITAEY    OPERATIONS. 


the  escape  of  the  gas.  Soon  afterward  the  whole  appara- 
tus appeared  to  be  on  fire,  and  the  remains  of  the  ma- 
chine descended  from  the  height  of  three  quarters  of  a 
mile  with  the  mangled  bodies  of  the  voyagers.  In  July 
following  Major  Money  ascended  in  a  balloon  of  his  own 
construction  from  Norwich,  which  burst ;  he  was  precip- 
itated into  the  German  Ocean,  where  he  remained  five 
hours,  clinging  to  the  wreck  of  the  balloon,  by  the  aid  of 
which  he  kept  himself  floating,  till  he  was  picked  up  by 
the  Argus  sloop-of-war  off  the  coast  of  Yarmouth. 


Testu-Brissy's  Balloon. 

The  ascent  of  M.Testu  from  Paris,  in  June,  1786,  last- 
ed twelve  hours.  His  balloon  was  furnished  with  wings 
and  other  steering  apparatus ;  and  when  he  had  ascend- 
ed 3000  feet,  the  distention  of  the  balloon  led  him  to  de- 
scend in  a  corn-field  in  the  plain  of  Montmorenci.  His 
balloon  was  seized  by  the  villagers,  when  he  cut  the  cords 
and  reascended,  and  was  driven  about  through  the  night 
by  a  terrific  thunder-storm,  but  descended  at  sunrise  un- 
injured, seventy  miles  from  Paris. 

About  this  time  attempts  were  made  to  render  aeros- 


BALLOONS    IN    MILITARY    OPERATIONS. 


109 


tation  useful  in  military  operations.  A  captive  balloon 
was  held  attached  to  a  cord  of  sufficient  length,  so  that 
a  person  could  ascend  to  a  corresponding  height,  and  ob- 
tain a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  enemy's  movements.  The 
most  successful  result  was  obtained  early  in  the  French 
Revolutionary  war,  when  a  balloon,  prepared  by  the 


The  French  Academy's  Balloon. 

Aerostatic  Institute  in  the  Polytechnic  School,  and  in- 
trusted to  the  command  of  experienced  officers,  was  dis- 
tributed to  each  of  the  Republican  armies.  The  deci- 
sive victory  which  General  Jourdan  gained  in  June,  1794, 
over  the  Austrians  at  Fleurus,  has  been  ascribed  princi- 


110  PEEILOUS   ASCENTS. 

pally  to  the  accurate  information  of  the  enemy's  move- 
ments, before  and  during  the  battle,  communicated  by 
telegraphic  signals  from  a  balloon  sent  up  to. a  moderate 
height  in  the  air.  The  aeronauts,  headed  by  Guyton  de 
Morveau,  mounted  twice  in  the  course  of  the  day,  and 
continued  about  four  hours  each  time  hovering  in  the 
rear  of  the  army,  at  an  altitude  of  1300  feet.  In  the  sec- 
ond ascent,  the  enterprise  being  discovered  by  the  ene- 
my, a  battery  was  opened  against  them ;  but  they  soon 
gained  an  elevation  above  the  reach  of  the  cannon. 

In  1802  Garnerin  visited  England,  and  ascended  in  a 
balloon  from  Ranelagh  Gardens,  Chelsea,  with  a  naval  of- 
ficer, when  they  reached  Colchester  in  less  than  an  hour. 
In  July  and  September,  Garnerin  repeated  his  ascent ; 
and  in  the  latter  month  descended  in  a  parachute  in  safe- 
ty from  a  height  at  which  he  could  scarcely  be  distin- 
guished. 

In  1807  Garnerin  made  a  night  ascent,  and,  rising  with 
unusual  rapidity,  attained  a  great  elevation.  By  some 
neglect,  the  apparatus  for  discharging  the  gas  became 
unmanageable ;  the  aeronaut  was  obliged  to  make  an  in- 
cision in  the  balloon,  which  then  descended  so  rapidly 
that  he  cast  out  his  ballast.  The  balloon,  in  this  way,  al- 
ternately rose  and  sank  for  eight  hours ;  and  the  aero- 
naut was  driven  by  a  thunder-storm  against  the  mount- 
ains, and  landed  at  Mount  Tonnere,  300  miles  distant 
from  the  place  of  his  ascent. 

Among  the  most  perilous  ascents  on  record  are  those 
of  Mr.  Sadler  from  Bristol  in  1810,  and  Dublin  in  1812. 
In  the  latter  voyage  he  was  wafted  across  the  Irish  Chan- 
nel, when,  on  his  approach  to  the  Welsh  coast,  the  bal- 
loon descended  nearly  to  the  surface  of  the  sea.  By  this 
time  the  sun  was  set,  and  the  shades  of  evening  began  to 
close  in.  He  threw  out  nearly  all  his  ballast,  and  sud- 
denly sprang  upward  to  a  great  height ;  and  by  so  do- 
ing, brought  his  horizon  to  dip  below  the  sun,  producing 
the  whole  phenomena  of  a  western  sunrise.  Subsequent- 
ly, descending  in  Wales,  he  of  course  witnessed  a  second 
sunset  on  the  same  evening  (Sir  John  Herschel's  Out- 
lines of  Astronomy).  Mr.  Sadler  was  long  a  famous 
aeronaut,  and  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  manufacturers 
of  soda-water.  His  two  sons,  John  and  Windham,  were 


COAL-GAS   FOB   BALLOONS.  Ill 

also  aeronauts:  the  latter  was  killed  in  1824  by  falling 
from  a  balloon. 

Before  the  introduction  of  gas-lighting,  the  mode  of  in- 
flating a  balloon  with  hydrogen  gas  was  by  a  slow  chem- 
ical process  from  oil  of  vitriol  and  water,  and  sheet  zinc, 
zinc  filings,  or  iron  filings ;  when,  the  water  being  de- 
composed, the  vitriol  causes  the  zinc  or  iron  to  attract 
the  oxygen,  and  form  with  it  an  oxyd,  while  the  hydro- 
gen, the  other  component  of  water,  is  liberated.  The  hy- 
drogen was  made  in  casks,  w^hence  it  was  conveyed  by 
hose  into  the  balloon.  Coal-gas  was  first  substituted  for 
hydrogen  in  1821  by  Charles  Green,  who,  on  the  corona- 
tion-day of  George  IV.,  ascended  from  St.  James's  Park. 
The  success  of  this  experiment  vastly  increased  the  facil- 
ities and  diminished  the  expenses  of  balloon  ascents. 
This  was  Green's  first  aerial  voyage;  he  subsequently 
made  upward  of  500.  In  1836  a  vast  balloon  was  con- 
structed in  Vauxhall  Gardens,  at  the  cost  of  2000  guin- 
eas. In  this  balloon  Green  ascended  November  7,  in  the 
above  year,  with  Mr.  Monck  Mason  and  Mr.  Holland,  and, 
crossing  the  British  Channel,  descended  in  eighteen  hours 
at  Weilburg  in  Nassau.  In  the  same  balloon,  Green, 
September  10, 1838,  with  Mr.  Rush,  reached  the  greatest 
altitude  ever  attained — 27,146  feet,  or  5  miles  746  feet. 

In  1838  a  return  was  made  to  the  heated-air  system: 
there  was  constructed  by  subscription  of  a  party  of  am- 
ateur aeronauts  an  egg-shaped  Montgolfier  balloon,  the 
height  of  the  York  Column,  and  half  the  circumference 
of  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  The  furnace  was 
dropped  into  the  centre  of  the  car,  and  the  chimney  was 
placed  in  the  lower  aperture  of  the  balloon :  the  heat 
could  be  raised  to  200°  Fahr.  in  three  minutes,  and  the 
bag  filled  with  170,000  cubic  feet  in  eight  minutes.  On 
May  24,  the  balloon  having  been  inflated  upon  a  platform 
in  the  Surrey  Zoological  Gardens,  an  attempt  to  ascend 
failed  from  the  furnace  being  too  small,  when  the  disap- 
pointed spectators  tore  the  machine  into  pieces. 

It  has  been  at  various  times  attempted  to  turn  the 
balloon  to  scientific  account,  of  which  efforts  the  follow- 
ing are  instances : 

De  Luc,  the  celebrated  Genevese  philosopher,  made  a  scientific 
voyage  in  a  balloon,  taking  up  with  him  a  barometer,  which  fell  at 


112  SCIENTIFIC   BALLOON    OBSERVATIONS. 

the  greatest  altitude  to  12  inches.  Supposing  the  barometer  to  have 
stood  at  that  time  at  30  inches,  it  follows  from  this  that  he  must  have 
left  below  him  in  quantity  exactly  three  fifths  of  the  entire  atmos- 
phere, since  12  inches  would  be  only  two  fifths  of  the  complete  column 
sustained  in  the  barometric  tube.  His  elevation  at  this  moment  was 
estimated  to  have  been  20,000  feet;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  had  not 
attained  a  point  amounting  to  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  the  entire 
altitude  of  the  atmosphere. 

In  1804,  MM.  Gay-Lussac  and  Biot  ascended  at  Paris  to  a  height 
of  13,000  feet,  provided  with  apparatus.  The  same  year  M.  Gay- 
Lussac  ascended  alone  23,000  feet.*  In  the  latter  voyage  he  con- 
firmed two  important  points:  1.  That  the  magnetic  force  experiences 
no  sensible  variation,  either  in  its  inclination  or  its  intensity,  from  the 
surface  of  the  earth  to  the  greatest  height  to  which  it  is  possible  to 
ascend.  2.  That  in  this  interval  the  constitution  of  the  atmosphere  is 
entirely  the  same.  M.  Gay-Lussac  observed  that  the  heat  decreased 
nearly  in  arithmetical  progression  in  proportion  as  he  rose  in  the  at- 
mosphere, and  that  each  degree  of  the  depression  of  his  centrigrade 
thermometer  corresponded  to  an  elevation  of  about  85  toises  5  feet. 

In  1806,  Carlo  Brioschi  (died  1833),  astronomer  royal  at  Naples, 
ascended  with  Andreani,  the  first  Italian  aeronaut.  Trying  to  rise 
higher  than  M.  Gay-Lussac  had  done,  they  got  into  an  atmosphere  so 
rarefied  as  to  burst  the  balloon.  Its  remnants  checked  the  velocity  of 
their  descent,  and  this,  with  their  falling  on  an  open  space,  saved 
their  lives ;  but  Brioschi  contracted  a  complaint  which  brought  him  to 
his  grave. 

On  June  17,  1823,  Captain  Beaufoy,  the  able  meteorological  ob- 
server, ascended  with  Mr.  Graham  in  his  balloon,  which,  at  the  height 
of  6605  feet,  became  enveloped  in  clouds,  above  which  was  a  vast  ex- 
panse of  frozen  snow,  with  enormous  mountain-like  masses,  burnished 
at  every  summit  by  the  rays  of  the  sun,  which  shone  most  brilliantly 
from  a  deep  blue  sky.  The  aeronauts  rose  11,711  feet,  at  which  height 
they  heard  the  report  of  a  gun,  and  could  distinguish  the  metropolis. 
At  the  highest  elevation,  19,000  feet,  clouds  were  still  visible,  and  the 
atmosphere  was  filled  with  fine  crystals  of  snow :  these  aeronauts 
found  no  difficulty  in  breathing. 

Four  ascents  were  made  in  1852  with  Mr.  Green,  in  his  Nassau 
Balloon,  by  a  Committee  of  the  British  Association,  which  reported  to 
the  Royal  Society  the  meteorological  observations  obtained :  the  air 
collected  in  the  ascents  scarcely  differed  from  that  at  the  earth  at  the 
same  time. 

The  aerial  phenomena  witnessed  by  Mr.  E.  Vivian,  M.A.,  in  a  bal- 
loon ascent  from  the  metropolis,  were,  the  altitude  of  the  horizon, 
which  remained  practically  on  a  level  with  the  eye  at  an  elevation  of 
two  miles,  causing  the  surface  of  the  earth  to  appear  concave  instead 
of  convex,  and  to  recede  during  the  rapid  ascent,  while  the  horizon 
and  the  balloon  seemed  to  be  stationary :  the  definite  outlines  and 
pure  coloring  of  objects  directly  beneath,  although  reduced  to  micro- 

*  A  like  elevation  has  since  been  attained  by  MM.  Barral  and 
Bixio. — Dr.  Lardner,  1855. 


PARACHUTES.  115 

scopic  proportions:  the  rich  combination  of  rays  bursting  through 
clouds,  and  having  the  sun's  disk  for  their  focus,  contrasted  with 
shadows  upon  the  earth  which  radiate  from  a  vanishing  point  on  the 
horizon,  the  narrow  shadows  of  clouds  and  eminences,  such  as  Harrow 
and  Eichmond,  being  projected  several  miles,  as  seen  in  the  lunar 
mountains :  the  magnificent  Alpine  scenery  of  the  upper  surfaces  of 
cloud,  still  illumined  at  high  altitudes  by  the  cold  silvery  ray,  con- 
trasted with  the  rich  hues  of  clouds  at  lower  levels,  and  the  darkness 
of  the  earth  after  sunset. 

In  acoustics,  several  interesting  phenomena  were  noticed.  The 
sound  of  London  rolled  westward  as  far  as  its  smoke,  but  was  lost 
above  the  clouds,  where  the  most  intense  silence  prevailed,  as  also 
near  the  surface  of  the  earth,  showing  that  sound  ascends. 

It  is  now  time  to  mention  Parachutes,  expedients  by 
which  an  aeronaut  is  enabled  to  lower  himself  from  a 
balloon  to  the  earth.  The  Parachute  resembles  a  vast 
umbrella,  to  the  handle  of  which  is  attached  a  basket  to 
support  the  aeronaut.  When  it  is  first  detached  from 
the  balloon,  it  is  shut  up ;  but,  as  it  descends,  the  air 
causes  the  folds  to  expand. 

The  idea  of  using  a  parachute  to  break  the  fall  is  not 
new.  Two  centuries  ago  two  umbrellas  were  seen  used 
as  parachutes  in  Siam.  In  France,  in  1783,  M.  le  Nor- 
mand  used  an  umbrella  as  a  parachute  in  jumping  from  a 
house  to  the  ground. 

Blanchard,  in  his  first  ascent  from  Paris  in  a  hydro- 

fen  balloon,  March  2,  1784,  added  wings  and  a  rudder, 
ut  found  them  useless ;  and  he  first  carried  a  parachute, 
or  open  umbrella,  attached  above  the  car,  to  break  the 
fall,  in  case  it  separated  from  the  balloon. 

In  October,  1797,  M.  Garnerin  ascended  from  Paris, 
and  when  at  the  height  of  2000  feet,  disengaged  from  his 
balloon  a  parachute,  in  which  he  descended :  at  first  the 
motion  was  slow  and  steady,  then  oscillatory,  but  he 
reached  the  earth  in  safety,  as  related  at  page  110. 

A  most  disastrous  descent  was  made  July  24, 1837,  by 
Mr.  Cocking,  in  a  parachute  constructed  by  him,  and  at- 
tached to  Mr.  Green's  Nassau  balloon.  The  parachute 
resembled  an  inverted  open  umbrella ;  and  when  Cocking 
cut  the  connecting  rope  from  the  balloon,  the  parachute 
collapsed,  he  descended  to  the  earth  with  great  velocity, 
and  was  taken  up  dead,  at  Lee,  near  Blackheath,  six 
miles  from  the  scene  of  his  ascent.  The  result  had  been 
nearly  equally  fatal  to  the  persons  in  the  car  of  Green's 


116  STEEKING   BALLOONS. 

balloon,  which  shot  up  so  rapidly  that  the  gas  was  forced 
out,  and  for  nearly  five  minutes  they  suifered  great  pain. 
Most  luckily,  they  had  provided  a  large  silken  bag  full 
of  atmospheric  air,  and  furnished  with  two  metal  tubes ; 
these  they  applied  to  their  mouths,  and  were  thus  en- 
abled to  breathe :  without  such  a  precaution,  suffocation 
w^ould  have  been  inevitable. 

In  September,  1838,  Mr.  Hampton  ascended  with  a 
parachute,  attached  to  a  coal-gas  balloon,  from  Chelten- 
ham, to  the  height  of  9000  feet ;  he  then  cut  the  con- 
necting cord,  when  the  balloon  rose  some  hundred  feet, 
and  burst ;  Mr.  Hampton  safely  descending  in  the  para- 
chute within  thirteen  minutes,  the  collapsed  balloon  hav- 
ing reached  the  earth  before  him. 

We  conclude  with  notices  of  a  few  of  the  more  ingen- 
ious varieties  of  contrivances  which  have  been  made  for 
navigating  the  air  in  the  present  century. 

In  1843  Mr.  Monck  Mason  proposed  to  propel  balloons 
by  the  Archimedean  Screw,  so  successfully  applied  to 
move  vessels  through  water.  He  accordingly  construct- 
ed a  large  egg-shaped  balloon,  placed  upon  a  wooden 
frame  in  the  form  of  a  canoe,  to  the  centre  of  which  he 
suspended  an  oblorfg  car.  At  the  head  of  this  car  he 
placed,  at  the  end  of  an  iron  axle,  a  portion  of  an  Ar- 
chimedean Screw ;  and  at  the  stern  of  the  car  was  a  large 
oval-shaped  rudder,  to  guide  the  balloon  on  either  side, 
horizontally.  In  a  model,  Mr.  Mason  set  the  screw  in 
motion  by  clock-work,  which  propelled  the  balloon  round 
the  room;  but  he  left  it  to  others  to  devise  machinery 
for  practical  working. 

A  still  bolder  draft  upon  credulity  was  presented  in 
1843,  with  all  the  appliances  which  the  graphic  art  could 
lend  to  design.  This  was  the  "Aerial  Transit  Machine," 
patented  by  a  Mr.  Henson,  and  to  consist  of  a  car  attached 
to  a  huge  rectangular  wing-like  frame,  covered  with  oiled 
silk,  or  canvas ;  the  machine  to  be  propelled  by  a  steam- 
engine  in  the  car,  working  two  vertical  fan- wheels  with 
oblique  vanes ;  while  a  frame,  like  the  tail  of  a  bird,  was 
to  act  as  a  rudder,  and  make  the  apparatus  ascend  or 
descend.  But,  d»*Mr.  Henson  had  not  provided  for  the 
buoyancy  of  all  this  machinery,  the  "Aerial  Transit  Ma- 
chine" never  rose  but  in  the  region  of  the  brain  of  the 
speculative  inventor ! 


AERIAL    CHARIOTS.  119 

In  1844  there  was  constructed  in  Paris,  by  M.  Marey 
Monge,  an  immense  balloon  of  sheets  of  copper  the  200th 
part  of  an  inch  thick,  in  extent  about  1500  yards;  the 
sheets  were  soldered  by  bands,  like  the  ribs  of  a  melon ; 
the  machine  weighed  800  pounds,  and  was  to  be  filled 
with  hydrogen  gas.  M.  Monge  submitted  his  project  to 
the  French  Academy.  By  substituting  copper  for  silk, 
he  maintained  that  the  aeronaut  might  remain  in  the  air 
for  any  length  of  time,  and  thus  be  enabled  to  study  the 
atmospheric  currents ;  and  by  connecting  the  balloon  by 
a  metal  wire  with  the  earth,  Monge  expected  to  conduct 
the  electric  matter  from  the  clouds,  and  thus  prevent  the 
formation  of  hail,  which  is  so  destructive  to  agriculture. 
However,  the  project  entirely  failed. 

In  1850,  M.  Julien,  a  watchmaker  of  Paris,  construct- 
ed a  model  balloon,  in  the  form  of  a  fish,  which  floated 
against  the  wind  by  clock-work  moving  a  pair  of  wings. 
The  model  was  of  goldbeater's  skin,  filled  with  gas,  and 
was  four  yards  long.  Twenty  years  previously,  Mr.  Egg, 
the  celebrated  gunmaker,  constructed  in  a  building  erect- 
ed for  the  purpose,  at  Knightsbridge  Grove,  a  huge  fish- 
shaped  balloon  of  goldbeater's  skin,  which  could  not  be 
navigated  in  the  air,  although  the  experiments  with  the 
model  were  successful. 

On  May  24, 1850,  Mr.  H.  Bell  ascended  from  Kenning- 
ton  in  an  "Aerial  Machine,"  shaped  like  an  elongated 
egg,  which  he  propelled  with  a  single  screw,  and  steered 
by  an  apparatus  for  nearly  -thirty  miles,  and  descended 
safely  at  High  Laver,  Essex.  This  is  one  of  the  few  suc- 
cesses of  steering. 

In  1850  M.  Petin  designed  at  Paris  aa  System'  of 
Aerial  Navigation,"  consisting  of  a  vast  framework  162 
yards  long,  holding  four  balloons,  each  90  feet  diameter, 
and  four  parachutes,  at  two  levels,  the  whole  worked  by 
two  horizontal  helices  and  wheel-work ;  the  platform  for 
several  persons.* 

Bishop  Wilkins  has  his  followers  in  our  time.  In  1827 
Colonel  Yiney  patented  a  Char  Volant,  to  be  drawn  by 

*  In  1859  there  was  constructed  at  New  York  an  "Aerial  Ship," 
the  height  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  London,  and  provided  with  a  life- 
boat attached  to  the  car ;  the  aeronaut,  T.  S.  C.  Lowe,  projecting  to 
cross  the  Atlantic  Ocean  in  this  vast  machine. 


120 


AERIAL   CHARIOTS. 


Kites,  occasionally  tandem  fashion;  and  in  the  Great 
Exhibition  of  1851  there  was  shown  a  Kite  Carriage, 
which  many  years  previously  had  been  experimented 
with  on  Durdham  Downs,  near  Bristol.  It  was  impelled 
by  the  air  acting  upon  large  kites,  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
to  twenty-five  miles  an  hour.  In  1857  Lord  Carlingford 
patented  an  Aerial  Chariot,  of  very  light  wood,  with 
three  wheels,  two  net-work  wings,  and  a  tail,  the  latter 
worked  by  "  an  aerial  screw,"  turned  by  a  winch  acting 
on  three  multiplying  wheels :  possibly,  adds  the  inventor, 
two  eagles  may  be  trained  to  draw  the  vehicle,  like  the 
Chariot  of  Jupiter ! 

The  problem  to  be  solved  in  aerial  navigation  is  to 
move  through  the  air  in  any  desired  direction.  Until 
this  be  accomplished,  the  Balloon  will  remain  a  toy  to 
amuse  a  crowd,  and  not  productive  of  any  gain  to  science. 
The  accounts  of  the  ascents  made  during  the  last  thirty- 
nine  years  would  fill  a  large  volume ;  and  the  details  of 
the  catastrophes  include  the  deaths  of  several  of  the 
aeronauts. 


Besnier's  Flying  Machine. 


Roger  Bacon.     From  a  scarce  print  by  ^Egidius  Sadeler. 

THE  TEUE  HISTOKY  OF  FEIAE  BACON. 

FEW  of  the  early  workers  in  science  have  been  so 
strangely  misrepresented  as  Roger  Bacon,  the  philoso- 
pher of  the  thirteenth  century,  but,  until  lately,  more 
popularly  known  as  the  "Friar  Bacon"  of  the  story- 
books, and  the  legend  of  the  Brazen  Head,  which  he  is 
said  to  have  made  to  speak.  Yet  he  was  the  author  of 
upward  of  eighty  scientific  and  philosophical  treatises, 
and  the  reputed  inventor  of  gunpowder  and  of  specta- 
cles. Tradition  framed  his  character  on  the  vulgar  no- 
tions entertained  in  his  day  of  the  results  of  experi- 
mental science:  he  was  regarded  as  a  learned  monk, 
searching  for  the  philosophers'  stone  in  his  laboratory, 
aided  only  by  infernal  spirits ;  whereas  he  was  the  saga- 
cious advocate  of  reform  in  education,  reading,  and  reason- 
ing; and,  what  was  equally  rare,  the  real  inquirer  into 
the  phenomena  of  nature.  Bacon  died  at  Oxford  in  the 
year  1292,  where  existed,  until  nearly  our  own  time,  a 
traditionary  memorial  of  "  the  Wonderful  Doctor,"  as  he 

F 


122  ROGER  BACON  AT  OXFORD. 

was  styled  by  some  of  his  contemporaries.  On  Grand- 
pont,  or  the  Old  Folly  Bridge,  at  the  southern  entrance 
into  Oxford,  stood  a  building,  called  "  Friar  Bacon's 
Folly,"  from  a  belief  that  the  philosopher  was  accustom- 
ed to  ascend  this  building  in  the  night  and  "  study  the 
stars."  It  was  entirely  demolished  in  1778;  and  the 
bridge,  of  which  Wood  says  "  no  record  can  resolve  its 
precise  beginning,"  was  taken  down  in  1825,  and  rebuilt 
in  modern  style ;  but  you  have  only  to  look  across  Christ 
Church  Meadow  to  the  pinnacled  tower  of  Merton  Col- 
lege to  be  reminded  that  this  was  the  earliest  home  of 
science  of  a  decidedly  English  school,  and  that  for  two 
centuries  there  was  no  other  foundation,  either  in  Oxford 
or  Paris,  which  could  at  all  come  near  it  in  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  sciences.* 

Roger  Bacon  belonged  to  this  distinguished  founda- 
tion, although  there  is  a  doubt  whether  he  was  not  of 
Brazen-nose  College.  He  was  born  near  Ilchester,  in 
Somersetshire,  in  1214,  the  year  before  the  signing  of 
Magna  Charta.  He  was  educated  at  Oxford,  next  stud- 
ied at  Paris,  and  returned  to  Oxford  with  a  doctor's  de- 
gree, which  was  confirmed  by  the  latter  University.  He 
next  took  the  vows  of  a  Franciscan  in  a  convent  possessed 
by  that  order  at  Oxford,  from  which  time,  1240,  he  close- 
ly studied  languages  and  experimental  philosophy.  His 
brethren  soon  grew  envious  of  his  success ;  the  lectures 

*  An  eloquent  writer  in  the  (Quarterly  Review  thus  draws  the  con- 
trast presented  by  a  rapid  transition  from  London  to  Oxford,  such  as 
may  now  be  accomplished  by  railway  almost  within  an  hour :  ' '  From 
noise,  glare,  and  brilliancy  the  traveler  conies  upon  a  very  different 
scene — a  mass  of  towers,  pinnacles,  and  spires,  rising  in  the  bosom  of 
a  valley  from  groves  which  hide  all  buildings  but  such  as  are  conse- 
crated *to  some  wise  and  holy  purpose.  The  same  river  which  in  the 
metropolis  is  covered  with  a  forest  of  masts  and  ships,  here  gliding 
quietly  through  meadows,  with  scarcely  a  sail  upon  it ;  dark  and  an- 
cient edifices  clustered  together  in  forms  full  of  richness  and  beauty, 
yet  solid,  as  if  to  last  for  ever — such  as  become  institutions  raised,  not 
for  the  vanity  of  the  builder,  but  for  the  benefit  of  coming  ages ; 
streets,  almost  avenues,  of  edifices,  which  elsewhere  would  pass  for 
palaces,  but  all  of  them  dedicated  to  God ;  thoughtfulness,  repose,  and 
gravity  in  the  countenance,  and  even  dress,  of  their  inhabitants ;  and, 
to  mark  the  stir  and  the  business  of  life,  instead  of  the  roar  of  car- 
riages, the  sound  of  hourly  bells  calling  men  together  to  prayer."  The 
one  is  a  city  in  which  wealth  is  created  for  man ;  and  the  other  is  one 
in  Avhich  it  has  been  lavished,  and  is  still  expended,  for  God. 


123 

which  he  gave  in  the  University  were  prohibited,  as  well 
as  the  transmission  of  any  of  his  writings  beyond  the 
walls  of  his  convent.  The  charge  made  against  him 
was  that  of  practicing  magic,  which  was  then  frequently 
brought  against  those  who  studied  the  sciences,  and 
particularly  chemistry.  Yet,  in  his  tract  De  Nullitate 
Magice,  Bacon  declares  that  experimental  science  enables 
us  to  investigate  the  practices  of  magic,  not  with  the  in- 
tent of  confirming  them,  but  that  they  may  be  avoided 
by  the  philosopher. 

Meanwhile  due  allowance  must  be  made  for  the  times 
in  which  Bacon  lived.  Even  his  astrology  and  alchymy 
— those  two  great  blots  upon  his  character,  as  they  are 
usually  called — are,  when  considered  by  the  side  of  a 
later  age,  irrational  only  because  unproved,  and  neither 
impossible  nor  unworthy  of  the  investigation  of  a  phi- 
losopher in  the  absence  of  preceding  experiments.  Ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Button's  laborious  inquiries,  Bacon  ex- 
pended in  twenty  years'  researches,  some  £2000,  a  very 
large  sum  for  the  time,  supplied  by  some  of  the  heads  of 
the  universities. 

That  Bacon  was  by  far  the  truest  philosopher  of  the 
Middle  Ages  is  now  generally  admitted.  He  was  fully 
acquainted  with  the  works  of  Euclid,  and  he  displayed 
great  knowledge  in  the  mixed  mathematics.  He  is  said 
also  to  have  understood  Greek. 

To  Pope  Clement  IV.  we  owe  the  production  of  Bacon's 
great  work,  the  Opus  Majus.  Clement  had  previously 
been  legate  in  England,  where  he  had  heard  of  Bacon's 
discoveries,  and  earnestly  desired  to  see  his  writings ; 
but  the  prohibition  of  the  Franciscans  prevented  his 
wish  being  complied  with.  After  his  election  as  head  of 
the  Church,  Bacon,  conceiving  that  there  would  be  no 
danger  or  impropriety  in  disobeying  his  immediate 
superiors  at  the  command  of  the  Pope,  wrote  to  Clement, 
stating  that  he  was  now  ready  to  send  him  whatever  he 
wished  for.  The  answer  was  a  repetition  of  the  former 
request,  and  Bacon  accordingly  drew  up  the  Opus  Majus, 
of  which,  it  may  be  presumed,  he  had  the  materials 
ready.  The  book  was  accordingly  sent,  but  was  hardly 
received  by  Clement  before  he  was  seized  with  his  last 
illness. 


124 

Bacon  enjoyed  freedom  from  open  persecution  until 
the  year  1278,  when,  in  his  sixty-fourth  year,  he  was 
summoned  before  a  council  of  Franciscans  at  Paris,  who 
condemned  his  writings,  and  committed  him  to  close 
confinement ;  the  particular  ground  of  accusation  being 
the  charge  of  innovation,  according  to  some,  but,  accord- 
ing to  others,  his  writings  upon  astrology.  During  ten 
years  Bacon  tried  to  procure  his  enlargement,  but  with- 
out success:  at  last,  however,  he  was  set  at  liberty, 
through  the  intercession  of  some  powerful  nobles  with 
the  Pope,  but  who  they  were  is  not  mentioned.  Some 
say  that  Bacon  died  in  prison ;  but  the  best  authorities 
state  that  he  returned  to  Oxford,  where  he  wrote  a  com- 
pendium of  theology,  and  died  in  1292.  He  was  buried 
in  the  church  of  the  Franciscans  at  Oxford.  The  manu- 
scripts which  he  had  left  behind  him  were  immediately 
put  under  lock  and  key  by  the  magic-fearing  survivors 
of  his  order,  until  the  documents  are  said  to  have  been 
eaten  by  insects. 

Mr.  Hallam  considers  it  hard  to  determine  whether  or 
not  Roger  Bacon  is  entitled  to  the  honors  of  a  discoverer 
in  science.  The  two  great  points  by  which  he  is  known 
are  his  reputed  acquaintance  with  Gunpowder  and  the 
Telescope.  In  his  Opus  Majus,  some  detonating  mixture, 
of  which  saltpetre  is  an  ingredient,  is  spoken  of  as  com- 
monly known ;  and  in  his  De  Secretis  Operibus,  he  ex- 
pressly mentions  sulphur,  charcoal,  and  saltpetre  as  in- 
gredients. But,  independently  of  the  claims  of  the 
Chinese  and  Indians,  Marcus  Graecus,  who  is  mentioned 
by  an  Arabic  physician  of  the  ninth  century,  gives  the 
recipe  for  gunpowder.  The  discovery  has  sometimes 
been  given  to  Schwartz,  the  German  monk ;  and  the  date 
1320  annexed  to  it,  which  is  much  posterior  to  that 
claimed  for  Bacon. 

Bacon's  discovery  of  Optic  Lenses  has  been  established 
beyond  a  doubt ;  and  he  conceived  the  Telescope,  though 
there  is  no  proof  that  he  carried  his  conception  into 
practice,  or  invented  the  instrument.  He  truly  describes 
a  telescope;  but  if  he  had  constructed  one,  he  would 
have  found  that  there  are  impediments  to  the  indefinite 
increase  of  the  magnifying  power,  arid,  still  more,  that 
a  boy  does  not  appear  a  giant,  although  he  attributes 


ROGER   BACON'S   DISCOVERIES.  125 

these  properties  to  the  telescope.  At  the  same  time, 
Bacon  asserted  that  a  small  army  could  be  made  to  ap- 
pear very  large ;  and  that  the  sun  and  moon  could  be 
made  to  descend,  to  all  appearance,  down  below,  and 
stand  over  the  head  of  the  enemy — ideas  which,  in  after 
times,  produced  either  the  telescope  or  some  modification 
of  it,  consisting  in  the  magnifying  of  images  produced 
by  reflection,  and  that  before  the  date  either  of  Jan  sen 
or  Galileo. 

Whether  the  invention  of  Spectacles  is  due  to  Bacon, 
or  whether  they  had  been  introduced  just  before  he 
wrote,  is  doubtful.  In  his  Opus  Majus  he  writes :  "  This 
instrument,  a  plano-convex  glass,  or  large  segment  of  a 
sphere,  is  useful  to  old  men,  and  to  those  who  have  weak 
eyes,  for  they  may  see  the  smallest  letters  sufficiently 
magnified ;"  whence  we  may  conclude  that  the  particular 
way  of  assisting  decayed  sight  was  known  to  him.  The 
invention  is  commonly  attributed  to  Alexander  de  Spiua, 
a  monk  of  Pisa,  who  died  in  1313.  Friar  Jordan  de 
Rivalto  tells  his  audience,  in  a  sermon  published  in  1305, 
that  "it  is  not  twenty  years  since  the  art  of  making 
spectacles  was  found  out,"  thus  placing  the  invention  in 
1285,  seven  years  before  Bacon's  death.  Among  other 
inventions  attributed  to  him  is  that  of  the  introduction 
of  the  Arabic  numerals  into  England ;  but  this  has  been 
completely  disproved. 

"  The  mind  of  Roger  Bacon,"  says  Hallam,  "  was 
strangely  compounded  of  almost  prophetic  gleams  of  the 
future  course  of  science,  and  the  best  principles  of  the 
inductive  philosophy,  with  a  more  than  sacred  credulity 
in  the  superstitions  of  his  own  time.  Some  have  deemed 
him  overrated  by  the  nationality  of  the  English.  But,  if 
we  may  have  sometimes  given  him  credit  for  the  dis- 
coveries to  which  he  had  only  borne  testimony,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  of  the  originality  of  his  genius."  He  bears 
a  singular  resemblance  to  Lord  Bacon,  not  only  in  the 
character  of  his  philosophy,  but  in  several  coincidences 
of  expression ;  and  the  latter  has  even  been  charged  with 
having  borrowed  much  from  Roger  Bacon,  without  hav- 
ing acknowledged  his  obligations. 

There  is  little  reason  to  suppose  that  Roger  Bacon's 
writings  were  read  much  out  of  his  own  University.  But 


126 


"BACON'S  FOLLY.' 


to  those  who  will  study  them,  there  is,  even  at  this  day, 
a  combination  of  simplicity  of  style  and  independence  of 
thought  altogether  unusual  in  his  time.  His  Opus  Majus 
contains  books  on  the  necessity  of  advancing  knowledge ; 
on  the  use  of  philosophy  in  theology ;  on  the  utility  of 
grammar  and  mathematics:  in  the  latter  of  which  he 
runs  through  the  various  sciences  of  astronomy,  chronol- 
ogy, geography,  and  music.  The  work  also  includes  a 
treatise  on  optics  and  experimental  philosophy,  besides 
discussions  upon  the  connection  and  causes  of  phenomena 
— all  treated  in  a  manner  greatly  in  advance  of  the  learn- 
ing of  the  thirteenth  century — the  dark  age  in  which  the 
wisdom  of  Roger  Bacon  was  as  a  light  hidden  beneath 
a  bushel  measure. 


'•  Bacon's  Folly,"  Grandpont,  Oxford. 


THE  DISCOVEKIES  OF  LEONAKDO  DA 
VINCI. 

VINCI  has  been  well  characterized  as  "  one  of  the  most 
accomplished  men  of  an  accomplished  age,  and  for  the 
extent  of  his  knowledge  in  the  arts  and  sciences  yet  un- 
rivaled." Although  he  devoted  himself  enthusiastically 
to  painting,  he  appears  to  have  found  time  also  to  study 
sculpture,  architecture,  engineering,  and  mechanics  gen- 
erally ;  botany,  anatomy,  mathematics,  and  astronomy ; 
and  he  was  not  only  a  student  of  these  branches  of  knowl- 
edge, but  a  master. 

"  None  of  the  writings  of  Leonardo,"  says  Hallam, 
"  were  published  till  more  than  a  century  after  his  death  ; 
and,  indeed,  the  most  remarkable  of  them  are  still  in 
manuscript.  As  Leonardo  was  born  in  1452,  we  may 
presume  his  mind  to  have  been  in  full  expansion  before 
1500.  His  Treatise  on  Painting  is  known  as  a  very  ear- 
ly disquisition  on  the  rules  of  art.  But  his  greatest  lit- 
erary distinction  is  derived  from  those  short  fragments 
of  his  unpublished  writings  that  appeared  not  many  years 
since,  and  which,  according  at  least  to  our  estimate  of  the 
age  in  which  he  lived,  are  more  like  revelations  of  phys- 
ical truth  vouchsafed  to  a  single  mind  than  the  super- 
structure of  its  reasoning  upon  any  established  basis. 
The  discoveries  which  made  Galileo,  and  Kepler,  and 
Msestlin,  and  Maurolycus,  and  Castelli,  and  other  names 
illustrious ;  the  system  of  Copernicus ;  the  very  theories 
of  recent  geologists,  are  anticipated  by  Da  Vinci  within 
the  compass  of  a  few  pages ;  not,  perhaps,  in  the  most 
precise  language,  or  on  the  most  conclusive  reasoning, 
but  so  as  to  strike  us  with  something  like  the  awe  of  pre- 
ternatural knowledge.  In  an  age  of  so  much  dogmatism, 
he  first  laid  down  the  grand  principle  of  Bacon,  that  ex- 
periment and  observation  must  be  the  guides  to  just  the- 
ory in  the  investigation  of  nature.  If  any  other  doubt 
could  be  harbored,  not  as  to  the  right  of  Leonardo  da 


128         *    DISCOVERIES    OF  LEONARDO   DA  VINCI. 

Vinci  to  stand  as  the  first  name  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
which  is  beyond  all  doubt,  but  as  to  his  originality  in  so 
many  discoveries,  which  probably  no  one  man,  especially 
in  such  circumstances,  has  ever  made,  it  must  be  an  hy- 
pothesis, not  very  untenable,  that  some  parts  of  physical 
science  had  already  attained  a  height  which  mere  books 
do  not  record.  The  extraordinary  works  of  ecclesiastical 
architecture  in  the  Middle  Ages,  especially  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  lend  some  countenance  to  this  opinion.  Leo- 
nardo himself  speaks  of  the  Earth's  Annual  Motion,  in  a 
treatise  that  appears  to  have  been  written  about  1510,  as 
the  opinion  of  many  philosophers  in  his  age." 

Mr.  Hallam  adds,  in  a  note,  "  The  manuscripts  of  Leo- 
nardo da  Vinci,  now  at  Paris,  are  the  justification  of 
what  has  been  said  in  the  text."  Our  historian  then 
quotes  from  a  short  account  of  the  MSS.  by  Venturi, 
published  at  Paris  in  1797,  a  few  extracts,  whence  we 
select  the  following : 

In  Mechanics, Vinci  was  acquainted  with,  among  other 
things,  1.  The  theory  of  applied  forces  obliquely  to  the 
power  of  the  lever.  2.  The  respective  resistance  of  beams. 

3.  The  laws  of  friction,  afterward  given  by  Amontons. 

4.  The  influence  of  the  centre  of  gravity  upon  bodies  at 
rest  and  in  motion.     5.  In  optics,  he  described  the  Cam- 
era Obscura  before  Porta ;  he  also  taught  aerial  perspect- 
ive, the  nature  of  colored  shadows,  the  movements  of  the 
iris,  the  effects  of  the  duration  of  visible  impressions,  and 
many  other  phenomena  of  the  eye  which  are  not  to  be 
found  in  Vitellio.     Lastly,  Vinci  stated  all  that  Castelli, 
in  an  age  after  him,  produced  upon  the  motion  .of  water, 
and  thus  gained  the  reputation  of  having  been  the  first 
who  applied  the  new  doctrine  of  motion  to  hydraulics, 
on  which  subject  he  was  long  considered  as  the  earliest 
writer  of  the  experimental  school. 

Leonardo  must  therefore  be  placed  at  the  head  of  the 
writers  on  the  physico-mathematical  sciences,  and  of  the 
true  method  of  study  by  the  moderns.  The  first  extract 
Venturi  gives  is  entitled  "  On  "the  descent  of  heavy  bod- 
ies, combined  with  the  rotation  of  the  earth."  He  here 
assumes  the  latter,  and  conceives  that  a  body  falling  to 
the  earth  from  the  top  of  a  tower  would  have  a  com- 
pound motion  in  consequence  of  the  terrestrial  rotation. 


DISCOVERIES    OF   LEONARDO    DA    VINCI.  129 

Venturi  thinks  that  the  writings  of  Nicolas  de  Cusa  had 
set  men  speculating  concerning  this  before  the  time  of 
Copernicus. 

Vinci  had  very  extraordinary  lights  as  to  mechanical 
motions.  He  says  plainly  that  the  time  of  descent  on  in- 
clined, planes  of  equal  height  is  as  their  length ;  that  a 
body  descends  along  the  arc  of  a  circle  sooner  than  down 
the  chord ;  and  that  a  body  descending  on  an  inclined 
plane  will  reascend  with  the  same  velocity  as  if  it  had 
fallen  down  the  height.  He  frequently  repeats  that  ev- 
ery body  weighs  in  the  direction  of  its  movement,  and 
weighs  the  more  in  the  ratio  of  its  velocity ;  by  weight 
evidently  meaning  what  we  call  force.  He  applies  this 
to  the  centrifugal  force  of  bodies  in  rotation  :  "  Pendant 
tout  ce  temps  elle  pese  sur  la  direction  de  sa  mouvement." 
Mr.  Hallam  then  quotes  another  passage,  and  adds,  that 
if  it  be  not  as  luminously  expressed  as  we  should  find  it 
in  the  best  modern  books,  it  seems  to  contain  the  philo- 
sophical theory  of  motion  as  unequivocally  as  any  of 
them. 

Leonardo  had  a  better  notion  of  Geology  than  most  of 
his  contemporaries,  and  saw  that  the  sea  had  covered  the 
mountains  which  contained  shells.  He  seems  also  to 
have  had  an  idea  of  the  elevation  of  the  Continents, 
though  he  gives  an  unintelligible  reason  for  it. 

He  explained  the  obscure  light  of  the  unilluminated 
part  of  the  Moon  by  the  reflection  of  the  Earth,  as  Msest- 
lin  did  long  after  him. 

Vinci  understood  Fortification  well,  and  wrote  upon  it. 
"  Since,  in  our  time,"  he  says,  "  artillery  has  four  times 
the  power  it  used  to  have,  it  is  necessary  that  the  forti- 
fication of  towns  should  be  strengthened  in  the  same  pro- 
portion." He  was  employed  on  several  great  works  of 
engineering.  So  wonderful  was  the  variety  of  power  in 
this  miracle  of  nature.* 

*  Hallam's  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe,  fifth  edition, 
vol.  i.,  p.  222-225.  The  MSS.,  after  Venturi  had  inspected  them, 
were  returned  to  Milan,  where  they  are  still  preserved.  It  is  said  that 
Napoleon  I.  carried  these  and  Petrarch's  Virgil  to  his  hotel  himself, 
not  allowing  anyone  to  touch  them,  exclaiming  with  delight,  "Ques- 
ti  sono  miei"  ("These  are  mine").  When  they  were  in  the  hands  of 
Count  Galeazzo  Areonauti,  James  I.  of  England  is  said  to  have  offer- 
ed him  3000  Spanish  doubloons  for  them  (nearly  £10,000) ;  but  this 

F2 


130  INSTRUMENTS    OP   WAR. 

His  acquirements  are  told  in  his  own  words,  in  a  letter 
to  Ludovico  il  Moro,  Duke  of  Milan,  when  he  offered  him 
his  services :  "  Most  illustrious  Signer, — Having  seen  and 
sufficiently  considered  the  specimens  of  authors  who  re- 
pute themselves  inventors  and  makers  of  Instruments  of 
War,  and  found  them  nothing  out  of  the  common  way, 
I  am  willing,  without  derogating  from  the  merit  of  an- 
other, to  explain  to  your  excellency  the  secrets  which  I 
possess ;  and  I  hope  at  fit  opportunities  to  be  able  to 
give  proof  of  my  efficiency  in  all  the  following  matters, 
which  I  will  now  only  briefly  mention  : 

"1.  I  have  means  of  making  bridges  extremely  light  and  portable, 
both  for  the  pursuit  of,  or  the  retreat  from,  an  enemy ;  and  others 
that  shall  be  very  strong  and  fire-proof,  and  easy  to  fix  or  take  up 
again.  And  I  have  means  to  burn  and  destroy  those  of  the  enemy. 

2.  In  case  of  a  siege,  I  can  remove  the  water  from  the  ditches ; 
make  scaling-ladders  and  all  other  necessary  instruments  for  such  an 
expedition. 

3.  If,  through  the  height  of  the  fortifications,  or  the  strength  of 
the  position  of  any  place,  it  can  not  be  effectually  bombarded,  I  have 
a  means  of  destroying  any  such  fortress,  provided  it  be  not  built  upon 
stone. 

4.  I  can  also  make  bombs  most  convenient  and  portable,  which 
shall  cause  a  great  confusion  and  loss  to  the  enemy. 

5.  I  can  arrive  at  any  (place  ?)  by  means  of  excavations  and  crook- 
ed and  narrow  ways  without  any  noise,  even  where  it  is  required  to  pass 
under  ditches  or  a  river. 

6.  I  can  also  construct  covered  wagons,  which  shall  be  proof 
against  any  force ;  and,  entering  into  the  midst  of  the  enemy,  will 
break  any  number  of  men,  and  make  way  for  the  infantry  to  follow 
without  any  hurt  or  impediment. 

7.  I  can  also,  if  necessary,  make  bombs,  mortars,  or  field-pieces 
of  beautiful  and  useful  shapes  quite  out  of  the  common  method. 

8.  If  bombs  can  not  be  brought  to  bear,  I  can  make  crossbows, 
balistas,  and  other  most  efficient  instruments  ;  indeed,  I  can  construct 
fit  machines  of  offense  for  any  emergency  whatever. 

0.  For  naval  operations,  I  can  also  construct  many  instruments 
both  of  offense  and  defense ;  I  can  make  vessels  that  shall  be  bomb- 
proof. 

10.  In  times  of  peace,  I  think  I  can,  as  well  as  any  other,  make 
designs  of  buildings  for  public  or  for  private  purposes ;  I  can  also  con- 
vey water  from  one  place  to  another. 

I  will  also  undertake  any  work  in  Sculpture — in  marble,  in  bronze, 
or  in  terra  cotta ;  likewise  in  Painting,  I  can  do  what  can  be  done  as 
well  as  any  man,  be  he  who  he  may. 

patriotic  nobleman  refused  the  monej',  and  presented  them  to  the  Am- 
brosian  Library. 


LEONARDO   DA   VINCI.  131 

I  can  execute  the  bronze  horses  to  bs  erected  to  the  memory  and 
glory  of  your  illustrious  father,  and  the  renowned  house  of  Sforza. 

And  if  some  of  the  above  things  should  appear  to  any  one  imprac- 
ticable and  impossible,  I  am  prepared  to  make  experiments  in  your 
park,  or  any  other  place  in  which  it  may  please  your  excellency,  to 
whom  I  most  humbly  recommend  myself,  etc." 

There  is  no  date  to  this  letter ;  it  was  probably  writ- 
ten about  1483,  or  perhaps  earlier.  The  duke  took 
Leonardo  into  his  service.  Why  he  chose  to  leave 
Florence  is  not  known;  he  had  made  several  proposi- 
tions for  the  improvement  of  the  city  and  the  state, 
which  were  not  listened  to :  one  of  his  projects  was  to 
convert  the  River  Arno,  from  Florence  to  Pisa,  into  a 
canal. 

To  the  above  may  be  added  the  evidence,  discovered 
in  1841  among  Da  Vinci's  manuscripts,  of  his  knowledge 
of  steam  power  applied  to  warfare,  accompanied  by  pen 
and  ink  sketches  of  the  apparatus  of  a  "  steam  gun," 
which  he  designates  the  Architonnere,  a  machine  of  fine 
copper,  which  throws  balls  with  a  loud  report  and  great 
force.  One  third  of  the  instrument  contains  a  charcoal 
fire,  to  heat  the  water,  which  being  done,  a  screw  at  the 
top  of  the  vessel  must  be  made  quite  tight.  All  the 
water  will  then  escape  below  into  the  heated  portion  of 
the  instrument,  and  be  immediately  converted  into  a 
vapor  so  abundant  and  powerful  that  the  machine  will 
carry  a  ball  a  talent  in  weight.  This  invention  Leonardo 
attributes  to  Archimedes. 


THE  STOKY  OF  PAKACELSUS. 

THIS  audacious  Swiss  charlatan  and  daring  innovator 
was  born  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth,  and  died  in  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century.  His  family  was  noble, 
though  poor,  and  he  was  early  initiated  into  the  secrets 
of  Astrology  and  Alchymy  by  his  father,  a  physician, 
and  by  the  Abbe  Tritheim.  He  passed  his  youth  in 
visiting  mines,  curing  diseases,  foretelling  the  future, 
and  seeking  the  Philosophers'  Stone.  During  a  journey 
in  Poland  he  was  made  prisoner  by  the  Tartars,  from 
whom  he  is  said  to  have  learned  some  arcana  of  Alchymy. 
He  then  went  to  Egypt,  where  he  was  initiated  into 
farther  mysteries.  Thus  equipped,  he  wandered  through 
Europe,  figuring  among  the  doctors,  astrologers,  and 
quacks ;  picking  up  stray  secrets  from  old  women,  gip- 
sies, magicians,  and  headsmen.  A  peripatetic  philoso- 
pher, not  a  book- worm,  he  read  but  little :  he  was  never 
regularly  educated,  and  had  a  horror  of  languages,  inso- 
much that  at  one  time  he  did  not  open  a  book  for  ten 
years  together.  But  he  talked  and  listened  to  all  classes, 
and  amassed  a  strange  medley  of  knowledge,  which  he 
poured  forth  in  his  lectures  with  amazing  facility.  Al- 
chymy at  this  period  was  fast  falling  into  discredit,  when 
Paracelsus  undertook  to  revive  and  rehabilitate  the 
study :  his  enthusiasm,  his  eloquence,  and  his  audacity 
produced  an  impression,  created  a  public  for  him,  and 
therefore  ruined  him  through  his  vanity. 

In  1526  he  returned  to  Switzerland.  A  lucky  and 
striking  cure  fixed  on  him  public  attention,  and  led  to  his 
being  appointed  Professor  of  Physic  and  Surgery  at 
Basle.  He  set  himself  in  opposition  against  all  tradi- 
tions, declaring  himself  the  rival  of  all  doctors,  past  and 
present.  His  audience  had  no  means  of  criticism.  They 
took  him  at  his  own  valuation ;  and  the  delighted  stu- 
dents so  thoroughly  entered  into  his  polemic  against  the 
schools,  that  they  burned  the  writings  of  Hippocrates, 


DISCOVEEIES    OF   PARACELSUS.  133 

Galen,  Avicenna,  and  Averroes,  in  the  very  court  of  the 
University.  He  lectured  to  students  in  his  and  their 
native  language,  instead  of  in  the  barbarous  style  and 
Latinity  then  universal.  Some  lucky  cures  confirmed 
his  reputation ;  his  failures,  as  usual  in  such  cases,  were 
passed  over.  Princes  consulted  and  enriched  him ;  pro- 
fessors corresponded  with  him.  But  Paracelsus  reigned 
only  a  short  time.  Success  ruined  him :  hitherto  he  had 
lived  temperately,  but  now  he  took  to  drinking  and  de- 
bauchery. Success  had  raised  him  enemies,  who  drove 
him  at  last  from  his  professorship ;  and  he  once  more 
resumed  the  profession  of  a  wandering  empiric.  In  a 
few  years  he  died,  at  the  conclusion  of  a  debauch,  struck 
by  apoplexy,  in  his  forty-eighth  year. 

As  a  medical  reformer,  Paracelsus  propounded  a  phys- 
iology which  was  novel,  and  in  those  days  striking.  The 
leading  idea  was  an  application  of  Astrology  to  Phys- 
iology. In  the  stars  he  placed  the  organ  of  the  vital 
force.  The  Sun  acts  upon  the  heart  and  abdomen,  the 
Moon  upon  the  brain,  Jupiter  on  the  head  and  the  liver, 
Saturn  on  the  spleen,  Mercury  on  the  lungs,  Venus  on 
the  loins,  etc.  Man,  being  a  compound  of  body  and 
spirit,  can  only  act  upon  his  spiritual  part  by  means  be- 
yond the  ordinary  terrestrial  phenomena.  Dreams  will 
reveal  medicines;  but  the  culmination  of  the  medical  ait 
is  in  Magic;  by  it  not  only  can  life  be  restored,  but 
health  prolonged  indefinitely ;  yet  this  boasted  possessor 
of  the  Philosophers'  Stone  and  the  Elixir  of  Life  died  in 
poverty,  at  an  early  age. 

Nevertheless,  Paracelsus  had  genius  enough  to  make 
posterity  forget  his  errors  and  absurdities,  as  a  glance  at 
his  discoveries  will  show.  To  him  we  owe  the  idea  of 
employing  poisons  as  medicines  ;  for  he  knew  that,  phys- 
iologically, there  was  a  profound  difference  between  a 
large  dose  and  a  moderate  dose  of  the  same  substance. 
He  also  made  known  to  Europe  various  preparations  of 
antimony,  mercury,  iron,  etc.  He  employed  preparations 
of  lead  for  diseases  of  the  skin,  and  first  used  copper,  ar- 
senic, and  sulphuric  acid  as  medicaments.  He  knew  that 
when  oil  of  vitriol  acts  upon  a  metal  there  is  an  air  dis- 
engaged, which  air  is  a  constituent  of  water.  He  knew, 
moreover,  that  air  is  indispensable  to  the  respiration  of 


134  CUBES   BY    PARACELSUS. 

animals  and  the  combination  of  bodies ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
was  on  the  threshold  of  the  modern  doctrine  of  combus- 
tion. Farther,  he  knew  that  digestion  was  a  dissolution 
of  the  aliments,  that  putrefaction  was  only  transforma- 
tion, and  that  all  which  lives  dies  only  to  resuscitate  un- 
der another  form.  He  maintained  that  the  virus  of  small- 
pox is  a  ferment,  and  that  the  fever  which  accompanies 
eruptions  is  a  sort  of  boiling  which  separates  the  impure 
from  the  pure  elements  of  the  blood.  By  a  bold  gen- 
eralization, he  placed  man  at  the  head  of  the  animal 
series,  asserting  that  his  organization  was  closely  allied 
to  that  of  animals,  a  position  on  which  rests  the  whole 
science  of  Comparative  Anatomy.* 

"  The  vaunts  of  Paracelsus  of  the  power  of  his  chem- 
ical remedies  and  elixirs,  and  his  open  condemnation  of 
the  ancient  pharmacy,  backed  as  they  were  by  many  sur- 
prising cures,  convinced  all  rational  physicians  that  chem- 
istry could  furnish  many  excellent  remedies,  unknown  till 
that  time ;  and  a  number  of  valuable  experiments  began 
to  be  made  by  physicians  and  chemists  desirous  of  dis- 
covering and  describing  new  chemical  remedies.  The 
chemical  and  metallurgic  arts,  exercised  by  persons  em- 
pirically acquainted  with  their  secrets,  began  to  be  seri- 
ously studied,  with  a  view  to  the  acquisition  of  rational 
and  useful  knowledge."! 

The  original  discoveries  of  Paracelsus,  Brande  consid- 
ers to  have  been  few  and  unimportant :  his  great  merit 
lies  in  the  boldness  and  audacity  which  he  displayed  in 
introducing  chemical  preparations  into  the  Materia  Med- 
ica,  and  in  subduing  the  prejudices  of  the  Galenical  phy- 
sicians against  the  productions  of  the  laboratory.  But, 
though  we  can  fix  upon  no  particular  discovery  on  which 
to  found  his  merits  as  a  chemist,  and  though  his  writings 
are  deficient  in  the  acumen  and  knowledge  displayed  by 
several  of  his  contemporaries  and  immediate  successors, 
it  is  undeniable  that  he  gave  a  most  important  turn  to 
pharmaceutical  chemistry ;  and  calomel,  with  a  variety 
of  mercurial  and  antimonial  preparations,  as  likewise 
opium,  thenceforth  came  into  general  use. 

*  Condensed  (with  interpolations)  from  a  paper  on  Etudes  Biogra- 
pldques,  par  P.  A.  Cap,  in  the  Saturday  Review,  No.  100. 
f  Sir  John  Herschel's  Disc.  Nat.  Phil.,  p.  112. 


CUBES   BY   PARACELSUS.  135 

Paracelsus  performed  most  of  his  cures  by  mercury 
and  opium,  the  use  of  which  latter  drug  he  had  learned 
from  Turkey.  The  physicians  of  his  time  were  afraid  of 
opium,  as  being  "cold  in  the  fourth  degree."  Tartar 
was  likewise  a  great  favorite  of  Paracelsus,  who  imposed 
on  it  that  name  "because  it  contains  the  water,  the  salt, 
the  oil,  and  the  acid,  which  bum  the  patient  as  hell 
does ;"  in  short,  a  kind  of  counterbalance  to  his  opium. 

Mr.  Hallam,  in  taking  leave  of  the  absurd  and  men- 
dacious paradoxes  of  Paracelsus,  sagely  observes  :  "  Lit- 
erature is  a  garden  of  weeds  as  well  as  flowers,  and  Para- 
celsus forms  a  link  in  the  history  of  opinion  which  should 
not  be  overlooked." 

If  he  found  hundreds  of  admirers  during  his  life,  he 
obtained  thousands  after  his  death.  A  sect  of  Paracel- 
sists  sprang  up  in  France  and  Germany  to  perpetuate 
the  extravagant  doctrines  of  their  founder  upon  all  the 
sciences,  and  alchymy  in  particular. 


John  Napier,  of  Merchiston.     From  a  rare  print  by  Delaram. 

NAPIER'S  SECEET  INVENTIONS. 

FEW  of  the  results  of  speculative  science  have  been  so 
soundly  appreciated  as  the  invention  of  Logarithms,  by 
John  Napier,  early  in  the  seventeenth  century.  His  in- 
genious and  contriving  mind  did  not,  however,  rest  sat- 
isfied with  these  pursuits ;  for  a  paper  with  his  signature, 
which  is  preserved  in  the  Library  at  Lambeth  Palace, 
asserts  him  to  be  the  author  of  certain  "  Secret  Inven- 
tions, profitable  and  necessary  in  these  days  for  the  de- 
fense of  this  island,  and  withstanding  of  strangers,  ene- 
mies to  God's  truth  and  religion."  Of  these,  the  first  is 
stated  to  be  "  a  Burning  Mirror  for  burning  ships  by  the 
sun's  beams,"  of  which  Napier  professes  himself  able  to 
give  to  the  world  the  "invention,  proof,  and  perfect  dem- 
onstration, geometrical  and  algebraical,  with  an  evident 
demonstration  of  their  error  who  alfirm  this  to  be  made 
a  parabolic  section."  The  second  is  a  Mirror  for  pro- 
ducing the  same  eifect  by  the  beams  of  a  material  fire. 
The  third  is  a  piece  of  Artillery,  contrived  so  as  to  send 


NAPIER'S  SECRET  INVENTIONS.  137 

forth  its  shot,  not  in  a  single  straight  line,  but  in  all  di- 
rections, in  such  a  manner  as  to  destroy  every  thing  in 
its  neighborhood.  Of  this  the  writer  asserts  he  can  give 
"  the  invention  and  visible  demonstration."  The  fourth 
and  last  of  these  formidable  machines  is  described  to  be 
"  a  round  Chariot  in  Metal,"  constructed  so  as  both  to 
secure  the  complete  safety  of  those  within  it,  and,  mov- 
ing about  in  all  directions,  to  break  the  enemy's  array 
"by  continual  charges  of  shot  of  the  arquebuse  through 
small  holes."  "  These  inventions,"  the  paper  concludes, 
"  besides  devices  of  sailing  under  water,  and  divers  other 
devices  and  stratagems  for  harassing  the  enemies,  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  work  of  expert  craftsmen,  I  hope  to 
perform.  John  Napier  of  Merchiston,  anno  dom.  1596, 
June  2." 

From  this  date  it  appears  that  Napier's  head  had  been 
occupied  with  the  contrivances  here  spoken  of  long  be- 
fore he  made  himself  known  through  those  scientific  la- 
bors by  which  he  is  now  chiefly  remembered.  Some  of 
his  announcements  are  so  marvelous  as  to  lead  us  to  sup- 
pose that  he  intended  in  this  paper  rather  to  state  what 
he  conceived  to  be  possible  than  what  he  had  himself 
actually  performed.  Yet  several  of  his  expressions  will 
not  bear  this  interpretation,  and  others  confirm  what  he 
asserts  as  to  his  having  really  constructed  some  of  the 
machines  he  speaks  of.  Thus  Sir  Thomas  Urquhart,  in 
a  strange  work,  The  Jewel,  first  published  in  1652,  evi- 
dently alludes  to  the  third  invention  as  "an  almost  in- 
comprehensible device ;"  adding,  "  it  is  this :  he  had  the 
skill  (as  is  commonly  reported)  to  frame  an  engine  (for 
invention  not  much  unlike  that  of  Archytas's  dove) 
which,  by  virtue  of  some  secret  springs,  inward  resorts, 
with  other  implements  and  materials  fit  for  the  purpose, 
inclosed  within  the  bowels  thereof,  had  the  power  to 
clear  a  field  of  four  miles  in  circumference  'of  all  the  liv- 
ing creatures  exceeding  a  foot  of  height  that  should  be 
found  thereon,  how  near  soever  they  might  be  to  one 
another ;  by  which  means  he  made  it  appear  that  he  was 
able,  with  the  help  of  this  machine  alone,  to  kill  30,000 
Turks  without  the  hazard  of  one  Christian.  Of  this,  it 
is  said,  upon  a  wager,  he  gave  proof  upon  a  large  plain 
in  Scotland,  to  the  destruction  of  a  great  many  heads  of 


138  NAPIER'S  BURNING  MIRRORS. 

cattle  and  flocks  of  sheep,  whereof  some  were  distant 
from  others  half  a  mile  on  all  sides,  and  some  a  whole 
mile."  Little  faith  is  attached  to  this  statement,  that 
Napier  actually  put  the  power  of  his  machine  to  the 
proof;  but,  taken  in  conjunction  with  Napier's  own  ac- 
count, it  seems  to  prove  that  he  had  imagined  some  such 
contrivance,  and  even  that  his  having  done  so  was  mat- 
ter of  general  notoriety  in  his  own  day,  and  some  time 
after.  It  should  be  added,  that  although  Sir  Thomas 
Urquhart  was  born  in  1613,  some  years  before  Napier's 
death,  The  Jewel  was  not  published  until  1652,  some  years 
after  the  reputed  inventor's  decease.  Urquhart  informs 
us  that  Napier,  when  requested  on  his  death-bed  to  re- 
veal the  secret  of  this  engine  for  destroying  cattle,  sheep, 
and  Turks,  refused  to  do  so,  on  the  score  of  there  being 
too  many  instruments  of  mischief  in  the  world  already 
for  it  to  be  the  business  of  any  good  man  to  add  to  their 
number.* 

An  able  writer  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine,  vol. 
xviii.,  has  collected  several  notices  of  achievements  simi- 
lar to  those  which  the  Scotch  mathematician  is  asserted 
to  have  performed.  In  regard  to  the  mirror  for  setting 
objects  on  fire  at  a  great  distance  by  the  reflected  rays 
of  the  sun,  he  adduces  the  well-known  story  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  fleet  of  Marcellus,  at  Syracuse,  by  the 
burning-glasses  of  Archimedes :  and  the  other  (not  so 
often  noticed),  which  the  historian  Zonaras  records,  of 
Proclus  having  consumed  by  a  similar  apparatus  the  ships 
of  the  Scythian  leader  Vitalian,  when  he  besieged  Con- 
stantinople in  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century.  Ma- 
laba,  another  old  chronicler,  however,  says  that  Proclus 
operated  on  this  occasion,  not  by  burning-glasses,  but  by 
burning  sulphur  showered  upon  the  ships  from  machines. 
The  possibility  of  the  mirror-burning  feat  wTas  long  dis- 
believed; but  Buffon,  in  1747,  by  means  of  400  plane 
mirrors,  actually  melted  lead  and  tin  at  a  distance  of  fifty 
yards,  and  set  fire  to  wood  at  a  still  greater,  and  this  in 
March  and  April.  With  summer  heat  it  was  calculated 
that  the  same  effects  might  have  been  produced  at  400 

*  There  is  a  common  report  among  the  people  at  Gartness  that 
this  machine  is  buried  in  the  ground  near  the  site  of  the  old  castle 
said  to  have  been  occupied  by  Napier. 


139 

yards'  distance,  or  more  than  ten  times  that  to  which,  in 
all  probability,  Archimedes  had  to  send  his  reflected 
rays.  "It  may  be  concluded,  therefore,  that  there  is 
nothing  absolutely  incredible  in  the  account  Napier 
gives  of  his  first  invention."* 

Napier's  second  announcement  is,  however,  more 
startling:  he  professes  to  have  fired  gunpowder  by  a 
single  mirror;  but  the  only  record  of  the  kind  wre 
possess  is  of  gunpowder  being  lighted  by  heat  from 
charcoal  collected  by  one  concave,  and  reflected  from 
another.  Napier's  fourth  invention,  the  chariot,  bears 
some  resemblance  to  one  of  the  famous  Marquis  of 
Worcester's  contrivances.  Sailing  under  water,  the  ob- 
ject of  Napier's  last  invention,  was  performed  in  his 
own  day  by  the  Dutch  chemist  Debrell,  who  is  reported 
to  have  constructed  a  vessel  for  King  James  I.,  which  he 
rowed  under  the  water  of  the  Thames.  It  carried  twelve 
rowers,  besides  several  passengers ;  the  air  breathed  by 
whom,  it  is  said,  was  made  again  respirable  by  means 
of  a  certain  liquor,  the  composition  of  which  Boyle 
asserts  that  he  learned  from  the  only  person  to  whom  it 
had  been  divulged  by  Debrell. 

Another  scheme  of  the  inventor  of  Logarithms  is  the 
manuring  of  land  with  salt,  as  inferred  from  the  follow- 
ing notice  in  Birrell's  Diary,  Oct.  23,  1598  :  "  Ane  proc- 
lamation of  the  Laird  of  Merkistoun,  that  he  tuik  upon 
hand  to  make  the  land  muir  profitable  nor  it  wes  before, 
be  the  sawing  of  salt  upon  it."  The  patent,  or  gift  of 
office,  as  it  is  called,  for  this  discovery,  was  granted  upon 
condition  that  the  patentee  should  publish  his  method  in 
print,  which  he  did,  under  the  title  of  The  new  Order 
of  Gooding  and  Manuring  all  sorts  of  Field-land  with 
common  Salt.  This  tract  is  now  probably  lost ;  but  the 
above  facts  establish  Napier's  claim  to  an  agricultural 
improvement  which  has  been  revived  in  our  day,  and 
considered  of  great  value,  while  it  proves  that  Napier 
directed  his  speculations  occasionally  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  arts  of  common  life,  as  well  as  to  that  of  the 
abstract  sciences. 

Reverting  to  the  Logarithms,  we  may  observe  that 
among  the  persons  who  had  the  merit  of  first  apprecia- 
*  Pursuit  of  Knowledge,  etc.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  Gl. 


140 

ting  the  value  of  Napier's  invention  was  the  learned 
Henry  Briggs,  reader  of  the  Astronomy  Lectures  in 
Gresham  College,  who  was  "so  surprised  with  admira- 
tion of  them  (the  Logarithms)  that  he  could  have  no 
quietness  in  himself  until  he  had  seen  the  noble  person, 
the  Lord  Marchiston,  whose  only  invention  they  were. 
When  they  met,  almost  one  quarter  of  an  hour  was  spent 
in  each  beholding  the  other,  almost  with  admiration,  be- 
fore one  word  was  spoke.  At  last  Mr.  Briggs  began : 
'  My  lord,  I  have  undertaken  this  long  journey  purposely 
to  see  your  person,  and  to  know  by  what  engine  of  wit 
or  ingenuity  you  came  first  to  think  of  this  most  excel- 
lent help  into  astronomy,  viz.,  the  Logarithms ;  but,  my 
lord,  being  by  you  found  out,  I  wonder  nobody  else  found 
it  out  before,  when  now  known  it  is  so  easy.' " 

Before  his  invention  of  Logarithms,  Napier  devised  a 
method  of  performing  multiplication  and  division  by 
means  of  small  rods,  having  the  digits  inscribed  upon 
them  according  to  such  an  arrangement,  that  when 
placed  alongside  of  each  other  in  the  manner  directed — 
in  order,  for  instance,  to  multiply  any  two  lines  of  figures 
— the  several  lines  of  the  product  presented  themselves, 
and  had  only  to  be  transcribed  and  added  up  to  give 
the  proper  result.  These  rods,  or  bones,  are  thus  alluded 
to  by  Butler  in  his  Bud&bras,  where  he  recounts  the 
"  rummaging  of  Sidrophel :" 

"  A  moon-dial,  with  Napier1  s  lones." 

A  set  of  the  bones  used  by  Napier  is  preserved  in  his 
family.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  his  fortunes  of  Nigel, 
makes  Davie  Ramsay  swear  by  "  the  bones  of  the  im- 
mortal Napier,"  the  novelist  having  an  indistinct  re- 
membrance of  what  these  "  bones"  were. 


LOKD  BACON'S  "NEW  PHILOSOPHY." 

THE  claim  of  this  wonderful  man  to  rank  as  a  dis- 
coverer in  science  will  scarcely  be  allowed  by  those  who 
question  the  title  of  his  predecessor,  and,  in  some  re- 
spects, prototype,  Roger  Bacon,  to  that  distinguished 
honor.  Nevertheless,  Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Verulam,  "  by 
his  hours  of  leisure,  by  time  hardly  missed  from  the  la- 
borious study  and  practice  of  the  law,  and  from  the  as- 
siduities of  a  courtier's  life,"  became  the  father  of  modern 
science,  and  will  be  justly  looked  upon  in  all  future  ages 
as  the  great  reformer  of  philosophy.  His  own  actual 
contributions  to  the  stock  of  physical  truths  were  small ; 
and  his  observations  and  experiments  in  physical  science, 
viewed  beside  the  results  obtained  by  his  immediate  suc- 
cessors, do  not  appear  to  great  advantage ;  nor  can  we 
compare  them  at  all  with  the  brilliant  discoveries  of  his 
contemporary,  Galileo.  It  is  only  when  viewed  in  refer- 
ence to  the  general  state  of  knowledge  in  his  own  times 
that  Bacon's  recorded  experiments  and  observations  can 
be  fairly  estimated.  To  glance  at  these  characteristics 
of  his  philosophic  mind,  and  at  the  effect  of  his  labors, 
rather  than  detail  the  labors  themselves,  is  all  that  can 
here  be  attempted. 

Francis  Bacon  was  born  in  York  House,  on  the  south 
side  of  the  Strand,  in  1 56 1 .  His  health  was  very  delicate ; 
and  to  this  circumstance  may  be  partly  attributed  that 
gravity  of  carriage,  and  that  love  of  sedentary  pursuits, 
which  distinguished  him  from  other  boys.  We  are  told 
that  while  still  a  mere  child  he  stole  away  from  his  play- 
fellows to  a  vault  in  St.  James's  Fields  for  the  purpose 
of  investigating  the  cause  of  a  singular  echo  which  he 
had  observed  there.  It  is  certain  that  at  only  twelve 
years  of  age  he  busied  himself  with  very  ingenious  spec- 
ulations on  the  art  of  legerdemain ;  a  subject  which,  as 
Professor  Dugald  Stewart  has  most  justly  observed, 
merits  much  more  attention  from  philosophers  than  it 
has  ever  received. 


142  THE   NOVUM    OKGANUM. 

In  his  thirteenth  year  Bacon  was  sent  to  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  where  he  studied  with  diligence  and 
success.  Dr.  Rawley,  his  chaplain  and  biographer,  re- 
lates that  "  while  he  was  commorant  at  the  University, 
about  sixteen  years  of  age  (as  his  lordship  hath  been 
pleased  to  impart  unto  myself),  he  first  fell  into  the  dis- 
like of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle — not  for  the  worth- 
lessness  of  the  author,  to  whom  he  would  ever  ascribe 
all  high  attributes,  but  for  the  untruthfulness  of  the  way 
— being  a  philosophy  (as  his  lordship  used  to  say)  only 
strong  for  disputations  and  contentions,  but  barren  of  the 
production  of  works  for  the  life  of  man ;  in  which  mind 
he  continued  to  his  dying  day."  Thus  early  Bacon  is 
said  to  have  planned  that  great  intellectual  revolution 
with  which  his  name  is  inseparably  connected. 

In  his  great  work  on  the  Instauration  of  the  Sciences, 
he  first  made  a  survey  of  knowledge  as  it  then  existed. 
In  its  second  part,  the  Novitm  Organum,  in  the  first 
book,  the  main  object  of  science  is  pointed  out,  its  true 
end  being  "to  enrich  human  life  with  new  discoveries 
and  wealth."  In  the  second  book,  Bacon  explains  the 
mode  of  studying  nature  which  he  proposed  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  science.  The  last  division  includes  the  use 
of  instruments  in  aiding  the  senses,  in  subjecting  objects 
to  alteration  for  the  purpose  of  observing  them  better, 
and  in  the  production  of  that  alliance  of  knowledge  and 
power  which  has  in  our  day  crowded  every  part  of  civ- 
ilized life  with  the  most  useful  inventions.  The  great 
merit  of  Bacon  undoubtedly  consists  in  the  systematic 
method  which  he  laid  down  for  prosecuting  philosophical 
investigation;  and  at  the  present  day,  those  especially 
who  busy  themselves  with  physical  pursuits  would  often 
do  well  to  recur  to  the  severe  and  rigorous  principles 
of  the  Organum.  Experience  and  observation  are  the 
guides  through  the  Baconian  philosophy,  by  which  its 
author  so  largely  contributed  to  the  existing  knowledge 
in  matters  of  fact.  Of  his  far-seeing  anticipation  we 
quote  an  instance.  Bacon,  after  remarking  that  every 
change  and  every  motion  requires  time,  has  the  follow- 
ing very  curious  anticipation  of  facts  which  appeared 
then  doubtful,  but  which  subsequent  discovery  has  as- 
certained : 


THE    INDUCTIVE   PHILOSOPHY.  143 

The  consideration  of  these  things  produced  in  me  a  doubt  alto- 
gether astonishing,  namely,  whether  the  face  of  the  serene  and  starry 
heavens  be  seen  at  the  instant  it  really  exists,  or  riot  till  some  time 
later ;  and  whether  there  be  not  with  respect  to  the  heavenly  bodies  a 
true  time  and  an  apparent  time,  no  less  than  a  true  place  and  an  ap- 
parent place,  as  astronomers  say,  on  account  of  parallax.  For  it 
seems  incredible  that  the  species  or  rays  of  the  celestial  bodies  can 
pass  through  the  immense  interval  between  them  and  us  in  an  in- 
stant, or  that  they  do  not  even  require  some  considerable  portion  of 
time. 

"  The  measurement  of  the  velocity  of  light,"  Professor 
Playfair  subjoins,  "  and  the  wonderful  consequences  aris- 
ing from  it,  are  the  best  commentaries  on  this  passage, 
and  the  highest  eulogy  on  its  author." 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  how  much  is  clue  for  the 
foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  to  Lord  Bacon,  who 
died  only  thirty-six  years  before  its  incorporation.  In 
his  Novum  Organum,  rejecting  syllogism  as  a  mere  in- 
strument of  disputation,  and  putting  no  trust  in  the  hy- 
pothetical system  of  ancient  philosophy,  he  recommends 
the  more  slow  but  satisfactory  method  of  induction,  which 
subjects  natural  objects  to  the  test  of  observation  and 
experience,  and  subdues  nature  by  experiment  and  in- 
quiry ;  and  "  it  will  be  seen  how  rigidly  the  early  Fel- 
lows of  the  Royal  Society  followed  Bacon's  advice."  It 
is,  however,  in  his  New  Atlantis  that  we  have  the  plan 
of  such  an  institution  more  distinctly  set  forth;  and 
Sprat  considered  that  there  should  have  been  no  other 
preface  to  his  ac.count  of  the  Royal  Society  than  some 
of  Bacon's  writings. 

After  the  glory  of  Bacon  had  set  forever,  and  his  name 
had  become  tarnished  with  infamy,  he  was  stripped  of 
his  offices,  banished  from  the  court,  heavily  fined,  and 
imprisoned ;  but  then,  discharged  and  his  sentence  com- 
muted, his  ruined  fortunes  were  never  repaired ;  and  the 
record  of  his  frauds,  deceits,  impostures,  bribes,  corrup- 
tions, and  other  malpractices,  is  one  of  the  blackest  pages 
in  history.  He  passed  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  the 
society  of  the  few  friends  whom  adversity  had  left  him. 
Scientific  pursuits  were  his  consolation,  and  at  last  caused 
his  death.  The  father  of  experimental  philosophy  was 
the  martyr  of  an  experiment.  It  had  occurred  to  him 
that  snow  might  be  used  with  advantage  for  the  purpose 


144  LORD  BACON'S  DEATH. 

of  preventing  animal  substances  from  putrefying.  On  a 
very  cold  day,  early  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1626,  he 
alighted  from  his  coach  near  Highgate  in  order  to  try 
the  experiment.  He  went  into  a  cottage,  bought  a  fowl, 
and  with  his  own  hands  stuffed  it  with  snow.  While 
thus  engaged  he  felt  a  sudden  chill,  and  was  soon  so 
much  indisposed  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  return 
to  Gray's  Inn.  The  Earl  of  Arundel,  with  whom  he  was 
well  acquainted,  had  a  house  at  Highgate.  To  that  house 
Bacon  was  carried.  The  earl  was  absent ;  but  the  serv- 
ants who  were  in  charge  of  the  place  showed  great  re- 
spect and  attention  to  the  illustrious  guest.  Here,  after 
an  illness  of  about  a  week,  he  expired,  early  on  the  morn- 
ing of  Easter  Day,  1626.  His  mind  appears  to  have  re- 
tained its  strength  and  liveliness  to  the  end.  He  did  not 
forget  the  fowl  which  had  caused  his  death.  In  the  last 
letter  that  he  ever  wrote,  with  fingers  which,  as  he  said, 
could  not  steadily  hold  a  pen,  he  did  not  omit  to  mention 
that  the  experiment  of  the  snow  had  succeeded  "  excel- 
lently well."  In  this  letter  Bacon  calls  himself  the 
"  martyr  of  science,"  and  compares  himself  to  Pliny  the 
elder,  whose  death  was  caused  by  his  over-zealous  ob- 
servation of  Vesuvius. 

In  his  will,  Lord  Bacon  "  expressed,  with  singular  brev- 
ity, energy,  dignity,  and  pathos,  a  mournful  conscious- 
ness that  his  actions  had  not  been  such  as  to  entitle  him 
to  the  esteem  of  those  under  whose  observation  his  life 
had  been  passed,  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  proud  confi- 
dence that  his  writings  had  secured  for  him  a  high  and 
permanent  place  among  the  benefactors  of  mankind.  So 
at  least  we  understand  those  striking  words  which  have 
been  often  quoted,  but  which  we  must  quote  once  more : 
'  For  my  name  and  memory,  I  leave  it  to  men's  charita- 
ble speeches,  and  to  foreign  nations  and  to  the  next  age.' 

"His  confidence  was  just.  From  the  day  of  his  death 
his  fame  has  been  constantly  and  steadily  progressing ; 
and  we  have  no  doubt  that  his  name  will  be  named  with 
reverence  to  the  latest  ages,  and  to  the  remotest  ends  of 
the  civilized  world." 

The  great  practical  value  of  the  benefits  which  have 
resulted  from  the  Baconian  philosophy  has  been  thus  elo- 
quently illustrated  by  Lord  Macaulay : 


THE   BACONIAN   PHILOSOPHY.  145 

Ask  a  follower  of  Bacon  what  the  New  Philosophy,  as  it  was  called 
in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  has  effected  for  mankind,  and  his  answer 
is  ready:  "It  has  lengthened  life;  it  has  mitigated  pain ;  it  has  ex- 
tinguished diseases ;  it  has  increased  the  fertility  of  the  soil ;  it  has 
given  new  securities  to  the  mariner ;  it  has  furnished  new  arms  to  the 
warrior;  it  has  spanned  great  rivers  and  estuaries  with  bridges  of 
form  unknown  to  our  fathers ;  it  has  guided  the  thunderbolt  innocu- 
ously from  heaven  to  earth ;  it  has  lighted  up  the  night  with  the 
splendor  of  the  day ;  it  has  extended  the  range  of  human  vision ;  it 
has  multiplied  the  power  of  human  muscles ;  it  has  accelerated  mo- 
tion ;  it  has  annihilated  distance ;  it  has  facilitated  intercourse,  cor- 
respondence, all  friendly  offices,  all  dispatch  of  business ;  it  has  en- 
abled man  to  descend  to  the  depths  of  the  sea,  to  soar  into  the  air,  to 
penetrate  securely  into  the  noxious  recesses  of  the  earth,  to  traverse 
the  land  in  cars  which  whirl  along  without  horses,  and  the  ocean  in 
ships  which  run  ten  knots  an  hour  against  the  wind.  These  are  but 
a  part  of  its  fruits,  and  of  its  first-fruits ;  for  it  is  a  philosophy  which 
never  rests,  which  has  never  attained,  which  is  never  perfect.  Its  law 
is  progress.  A  point  which  yesterday  was  invisible  is  its  goal  to-day, 
and  will  be  its  starting-post  to-morrow." 

The  same  brilliant  writer  denominates  the  two  leading 
principles  of  the  Baconian  philosophy  to  be  utility  and 
progress,  of  which  there  can  not  be  more  direct  evidence 
than  in  the  fact  that  the  writings  of  Lord  Bacon  have 
been  more  extensively  read  in  England  during  the  last 
forty  years  than  in  the  two  hundred  years  which  pre- 
ceded. 

G 


INVENTIONS  OF  PEINCE  EUPEET. 

THIS  ill-starred  soldier  of  fortune,  born  in  1619,  and 
nephew  of  King  Charles  I.,  was  a  man  of  distinguished 
talent  and  bravery,  but  lacked  "  the  better  part  of  valor" 
— discretion.  His  checkered  fortunes  are  prominent  in 
the  records  of  the  Civil  Wars ;  and  we  have  here  to 
glance  at  his  later  life,  when  the  impetuosity  of  the  sol- 
dier had  subsided  into  the  calmness  of  the  philosopher ; 
and  it  is  to  the  prince's  peculiar  readiness  for  the  change 
of  employment  and  pursuits  that  we  trace  the  peaceable 
close  of  his  busy  life. 

After  his  reconciliation  with  Charles  II.,  Rupert  took 
up  his  residence  with  the  Elector  of  Mentz ;  and  here, 
says  Mr.  Eliot  Warburton,  in  the  first  leisure  of  his  man- 
hood, his  mind  reverted  with  a  sense  of  luxury  to  the 
philosophical  pursuits  in  which  even  his  youth  had  taken 
pleasure.  He  now  found  new  sources  of  unexhausted 
interest  in  the  forge,  the  laboratory,  and  the  painter's 
studio. 

It  was  during  this  lull  in  the  stormy  life  of  Rupert  that 
he  discovered  or  improved  upon  his  art  of  Mezzotinto. 
So  long  ago  as  1637,  when  immured  in  the  castle  of  Lintz, 
he  had  exercised  his  active  genius  in  some  etchings  that 
still  remain,  and  bear  that  date.  He  was  long  said  to 
have  discovered  the  art  of  Engraving  in  Mezzotinto, 
stated  to  have  been  suggested  to  him  by  observing  a  sol- 
dier one  morning  rubbing  off  from  the  barrel  of  his  mus- 
ket the  rust  which  it  had  contracted  by  being  exposed 
to  the  night-dew.  The  prince  perceived,  on  examination, 
that  the  dew  had  left  on  the  surface  of  the  steel  a  collec- 
tion of  very  minute  holes,  so  as  to  form  the  resemblance 
of  a  dark  engraving,  parts  of  which  had  been  here  and 
there  already  rubbed  away  by  the  soldier.  He  immedi- 
ately conceived  the  idea  that  it  would  be  practicable  to 
find  a  way  of  covering  a  plate  of  copper  in  the  same  man- 
ner with  little  holes,  which,  being  inked,  and  laid  upon 


INVENTIONS    OF    PRINCE    KUPEKT.  147 

paper,  would  undoubtedly  produce  a  black  impression ; 
while  by  scraping  away  in  different  degrees  such  parts 
of  the  surface  as  might  be  required,  the  paper  would  be 
left  white  where  there  were  no  holes.  Pursuing  this 
thought,  he  at  last,  after  a  variety  of  experiments,  invent- 
ed a  kind  of  steel  roller,  covered  with  points,  or  salient 
teeth,  which,  being  pressed  against  the  copper  plate,  in- 
dented it  in  the  manner  he  wished ;  and  then  the  rough- 
ness thus  occasioned  had  only  to  be  scraped  down,  where 
necessary,  in  order  to  produce  any  gradation  of  shade 
that  might  be  desired.  This  anecdote  obtained  curren> 
cy  from  its  being  related  by  Lord  Orford,  in  his  famous 
work  upon  the  Arts,  as  well  as  from  the  avidity  with 
which-  origins  of  the  arts  are  commonly  set  down  as  the 
results  of  accident. 

The  discovery  of  Mezzotinto  has  likewise  been  claimed 
for  Sir  Christopher  Wren ;  but  his  communication  to  the 
Royal  Society  upon  the  subject  is  of  date  four  years  sub- 
sequent to  the  date  of  the  earliest  of  the  mezzotinto  plates 
engraved  by  Prince  Rupert. 

The  real  inventor  of  this  art  was  Louis  von  Siegen,  a 
lieutenant  colonel  in  the  service  of  the  Landgrave  of 
Hesse  Cassel,  from  whom  Prince  Rupert  learned  the  se- 
cret when  in  Holland,  and  brought  it  with  him  to  En- 
gland, when  he  came  over  a  second  time  in  the  suite  of 
Charles  II.  Some  curious  and  very  rare  prints,  purchased 
on  the  Continent,  and  now  deposited  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, place  the  claims  of  Yon  Siegen  beyond  doubt.  In 
this  collection  is  a  portrait  of  the  Princess  Amelia  Eliza- 
beth of  Hesse,  dated  1643,  which  is  fifteen  years  anterior 
to  the  earliest  of  Prince  Rupert's  dates :  there  is  another 
portrait  of  the  same  date ;  and  another  by  Von  Siegen 
bears  the  most  conclusive  evidence  of  its  having  been 
produced  in  the  very  infancy  of  the  art ;  besides  which 
is  the  fact  that  Yon  Siegen  frequently  attached  the  words 
"primus  inventor"  to  his  plates.  There  are  also  works 
by  Furstenburg,  dated  1656. 

Prince  Rupert's  plates,  however,  evince  a  more  ma- 
tured knowledge  of  the  power  of  Mezzotinto  than  those 
of  its  inventor,  Yon  Siegen  ;  and  Rupert  by  himself,  or 
with  the  assistance  of  Wallerant  Yaillaint,  an  artist  whom 
he  retained  in  his  suite,  is  thought  to  have  improved  the 


148 

mechaDical  mode  of  laying  the  mezzotinto  ground ;  but 
this  observation  does  not  apply  to  the  principle  of  the  art. 

The  prince  was,  in  the  fullest  sense,  a  working  invent- 
or :  he  labored  heartily  at  his  own  forge,  and  applied 
himself  to  the  practical  as  well  as  the  theoretical  details 
of  science.  The  writer  of  his  funeral  ode  describes  him 
as  forging  "  the  thunderbolts  of  war  his  hands  so  well 
could  throw."  The  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society 
record  his  mode  of  fabricating  a  gunpowder  often  times 
the  ordinary  strength  at  that  time  used ;  likewise  a  mode 
of  blowing  up  rocks  in  mines,  or  under  water ;  "  an  in- 
strument to  cast  platforms  into  perspective ;"  an  hydraul- 
ic engine ;  a  mode  of  making  hail-shot ;  and  an  improve- 
ment in  the  naval  quadrant.  Among  his  mechanical  la- 
bors are  also  to  be  reckoned  his  improvement  in  the  locks 
of  fire-arms,  and  his  guns  for  discharging  several  bullets 
very  rapidly.  Among  his  chemical  discoveries  was  the 
composition  now  called  Prince's  Metal,  of  which  candle- 
sticks and  small  kitchen  pestles  and  mortars  are  made : 
this  is  an  alloy  of  copper  and  zinc,  which  contains  more 
copper  than  brass  does,  and  is  prepared  by  adding  this 
metal  to  the  alloy.  To  the  list  of  the  prince's  inventions 
must  be  added  a  mode  of  rendering  black-lead  fusible, 
and  rechanging  it  into  its  original  state.  To  him  also 
has  been  attributed  the  toy  that  bears  his  name  as  "  Ru- 
pert's Drop,"  that  curious  bubble  of  glass  which  has  long 
amused  children  and  puzzled  philosophers. 

The  prince  also  discovered  a  method  of  boring  guns, 
which  was  afterward  carried  into  executien  in  Romney 
Marsh  by  a  speculator ;  but  some  secret  contrivance  of 
annealing  the  metal  was  not  understood  except  by  Ru- 
pert, and  the  matter  died  with  him.  His  mode  of  tem- 
pering the  Kirby  fish-hooks  was  among  his  lesser  dis- 
coveries. 

Nor  must  Rupert's  pursuits  in  Glass-making  be  for- 
gotten. The  prince  had  at  Chelsea  an  experimental 
glass-house,  which  adjoined  Chelsea  College ;  for  we  find 
by  the  Council  Minutes  of  the  Royal  Society  that  the 
college  and.  lands  "  might  have  been  well  disposed  of 
(before  1682)  but  for  the  annoyance  of  Prince  Rupert's 
glass-house,  which  adjoined  it."  Sir  Jonas  Moore  wrote 
to  the  prince,  at  the  request  of  the  council,  urging  him  to 


, 


PRINCE  RUPERT'S  LABOBATORY  IN  WINDSOR  CASTLE:  VISIT  OF  CHABLES  II. 


RUPERT'S  RESIDENCE  IN  WINDSOR  CASTLE.       151 

"  consider  the  Society,  on  account  of  the  mischief  that 
his  glass-house  was  doing  to  the  college"  (Weld's  His- 
tory of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  i.,  p.  279). 

After  the  Restoration  Rupert  was  received  with  honor 
by  the  king ;  and  Mr.  Warburton  tells  us  that  the  prince 
"  established  a  seclusion  for  himself  in  the  high  tower  in 
Windsor  Castle,*  which  he  soon  furnished  after  his  own 
peculiar  taste.  In  one  set  of  apartments  forges,  labora- 
tory instruments,  retorts,  and  crucibles,  with  all  sorts  of 
metals,  fluids,  and  crude  ores,  lay  strewed  around  in  the 
luxurious  confusion  of  a  bachelor's  domain;  in  other 
rooms,  armor  and  arms  of  all  sorts,  from  that  which  had 
blunted  the  Damascus  blade  of  the  Holy  War  to  those 
which  had  lately  clashed  at  Marston  Moor  and  Naseby. 
In  another  was  a  library  stored  with  strange  books,  a 
list  of  which  may  still  be  seen  in  the  Harleian  Miscel- 
lany." 

*  Rupert's  residence  in  Windsor  Castle,  of  which  Charles  II.  ap- 
pointed him  governor,  was  in  the  keep  or  round  tower. 


"  PRINCE  RUPERT'S  DROPS." 

THESE  philosophical  toys,  to  which  we  have  just  allud- 
ed, take  their  English  name  from  having  been  first  made 
known  in  England  by  Prince  Rupert,  and  not  from  his 
having  invented  them,  as  commonly  supposed. 

Their  origin  has  been  much  disputed.  Beckmann  con- 
siders it  more  than  probable  that  these  Drops,  and  the 
singular  property  which  they  possess,  have  been  known 
from  time  immemorial.  All  glass,  when  suddenly  cool- 
ed, becomes  brittle,  and  breaks  on  the  least  scratch.  On 
this  account,  as  far  back  as  the  history  of  the  art  can  be 
traced,  a  cooling  furnace  was  always  constructed  close  to 
the  fusing  furnace.  A  drop  of  fused  glass  falling  into 
water  might  easily  have  given  rise  to  the  invention  of 
these  Drops ;  at  any  rate,  this  might  ha^e  been  the  case 
in  rubbing  off  what  is  called  the  navel — that  piece  of 
glass  which  remains  adhering  to  the  pipe  when  any  ar- 
ticle has  been  blown,  and  which  the  workman  must  rub 
off. 

It  is,  however,  certain  that  these  Drops  were  not 
known  to  experimental  philosophers  before  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Monconys,  who  traveled  in 
the  year  1656,  was  present  when  some  experiments  were 
made  at  Paris  before  a  learned  society,  which  assembled 
at  the  house  of  Mommor,  the  well-known  patron  of  Gas- 
sendi ;  and  in  the  same  year  he  saw  similar  experiments 
made  by  several  scientific  persons  in  London.  Beck- 
mann then  shows  it  to  be  probable  that  these  Drops 
were  sent  to  Paris  from  Stockholm  by  Chanut,  who  was 
then  French  embassador  at  the  Swedish  court.  About 
fifteen  years  before,  that  is,  in  1641,  the  first  glass-houses 
were  established  in  Sweden,  and  in  all  probability  by 
Germans ;  and  it  is  possible  that  when  the  blowing  of 
glass  was  first  seen,  glass  drops  may  have  excited  atten- 
tion, which  they  had  not  met  with  in  Germany,  where 
glass-houses  had  been  long  established.  It  can  never- 
theless be  proved  that  the  Drops  were  known  to  the 


"  PRINCE  RUPERT'S  DROPS."  153 

German  glass-blowers  much  earlier.  In  1695,  Schulen- 
burg,  of  the  Cathedral  school  of  Bremen,  published  a 
German  dissertation  on  glass  drops  and  their  properties, 
in  which  he  says  that  he  was  informed  by  glass-blowers 
worthy  of  credit  that  these  Drops  had  been  made  more 
than  seventy  years  before  at  the  Mecklenburg  glass- 
houses— that  is  to  say,  about  the  year  1625. 

Professor  Reyher,  of  Kiel,  states  that  Henry  Sievers, 
teacher  of  mathematics  at  Hamburg,  had  assured  him 
that  such  glass  drops  were  given  to  his  father  by  a  glass- 
maker  so  early  as  the  year  1637 ;  and  that  his  father 
had  exhibited  them  in  a  company  of  friends,  who  were 
much  astonished  at  their  eifects.  Reyher  adds  that  he 
himself  had  seen  at  Ley  den,  in  1656,  the  first  of  these 

flass  drops  which  had  been  made  at  Amsterdam,  where 
e  afterward  purchased  some  of  the  same  kind ;  but  in 
1666  he  procured  for  a  trifling  sum  a  great  many  of  them 
from  the  glass-houses  in  the  neighborhood  of  Kiel.  -  It  is 
worthy  of  remark,  that  Huet,  who  paid  considerable 
attention  to  the  history  of  inventions,  says  that  the  first 
glass  drops,  which  he  had  seen  also  in  the  society  held  at 
the  house  of  Mommor,  were  brought  to  France  from 
Germany.  According,  however,  to  Anthony  le  Grand 
(Historia  Naturalis,  1680),  they  came  from  Prussia. 
The  French  call  these  "  glass  tears"  larmes  Bataviques, 
from  the  statement  of  the  first  being  made  in  Holland.; 
but  we  incline  to  think  that  as  the  Drops  were  the  result 
of  a  common  operation  in  glass-houses,  their  property 
may  have  been  as  commonly  known  among  glass-makers, 
but  not  so  early  observed  by  philosophers. 

The  drops  were  first  brought  to  England  in  1660,  and 
in  the  proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society  occurs  this  entry : 

Aug.  14.  Sir  Robert  Moray  brought  in  glass  drops,  an  account  of 
which  was  ordered  to  be  registered. 

Accordingly,  the  first  volume  of  the  register  book  con- 
tains a  very  long  account  of  them  and  their  manufacture. 
They  were  so  well  known  when  Hudibras  was  written 
as  to  be  used  by  Butler  in  popular  illustration.  In  part 
ii.,  canto  2,  we  have, 

"Honor  is  like  that  glassy  bubble 
That  finds  philosophers  such  trouble  ; 
G2 


154 

Whose  least  part  crack'd,  the  whole  does  fly, 
And  wits  are  crack'd  to  find  out  why." 

The  Drop  appears  to  have  been  first  brought  from  the 
Continent  by  Prince  Rupert,  and  hence  associated  with 
his  name.  M.  Rohalt,  in  his  Physics,  calls  the  Drop  a 
kind  of  miracle  in  nature,  and  says : 

"  Ed.  Clarke  lately  discovered  and  brought  it  hither 
from  Holland,  and  which  has  traveled  through  all  the 
universities  in  Europe,  where  it  has  raised  the  curiosity 
and  confounded  the  reason  of  the  greatest  part  of  the 
philosophers." 

He  accounts  for  it  as  follows :  "  The  Drop,  when 
taken  hot  from  the  fire,  is  suddenly  immersed  in  some 
appropriate  liquor  (cold  water,  he  thinks,  will  break  it*), 
by  which  means  the  pores  on  the  outside  are  closed,  and 
the  substance  of  the  glass  condensed ;  while  the  inside 
not  cooling  so  fast,  the  pores  are  left  wider  and  wider 
from  the  surface  to  the  middle,  so  that  the  air,  being  let 
in,  and  finding  no  passage,  bursts  it  to  pieces.  To  prove 
the  truth  of  this  explication,  he  observes,  that  if  you 
break  off  the  very  point  of  it  the  drop  will  not  burst, 
because  that  part  being  very  slender  it  was  cooled  all  at 
once,  the  pores  were  equally  closed,  and  there  is  no 
passage  for  the  air  into  the  wider  pores  below.  If  you 
heat  the  drop  again  in  the  fire,  and  let  it  cool  gradually, 
the  outer  pores  will  be  opened,  and  made  as  large  as  the 
inner ;  and  then,  in  whatever  part  you  break  it,  there 
will  be  no  bursting.  He  gave  three  of  the  drops  to  three 
several  jewelers,  to  be  drilled  or  filed;  but  when  they 
had  worked  them  a  little  way — that  is,  beyond  the  pores 
which  were  closed — they  all  burst  to  powder." 

The  Drop  is  thus  described  in  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions, vol.  xlvi.,  p.  175  : 

"  The  bubble  is  in  form  somewhat  pear-shaped,  or  like 
a  leech ;  it  is  formed  by  dropping  highly-refined  green 
glass,  when  melted,  into  cold  water.  Its  end  is  so  hard 
that  it  can  scarcely  be  broken  on  an  anvil ;  but  if  the 
smallest  particle  of  its  taper  end  is  broken  off,  the  whole 
flies  at  once  into  atoms  and  disappears.  The  theory  of 
this  phenomenon  is,  that  its  particles,  when  in  fusion, 
are  in  a  state  of  repulsion ;  but  on  being  dropped  into 
*  Here  he  is  mistaken. 


"PRINCE  RUPERT'S  DROPS."  155 

the  water  its  superficies  is  annealed,  and  the  particles  re- 
turn into  the  power  of  each  other's  attraction,  the  inner 
particles,  still  in  a  state  of  repulsion,  being  confined  with- 
in their  outward  covering." 

Though  simple  in  structure,  these  Drops  are  difficult 
to  make.  They  may  be  purchased  of  philosophical  in- 
strument makers,  and  at  a  few  toy-shops ;  but  we  re- 
member Rupert's  Drops,  or  "hand-crackers,"  as  they 
were  called,  common  at  fairs,  as  well  as  "  candle-bombs" 
(a  little  water  in  glass  hermetically  sealed),  which  are 
mentioned  by  Hook  in  his  Micrographia,  1665,  but  were 
known  in  Germany  before  that  date. 


SIR  SAMUEL  MORLAND  AND  HIS 
INVENTIONS. 

AMONG  the  records  of  the  ingenious  men  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  life  of  Sir  Samuel  Morland  is  entitled 
to  special  regard,  for  the  glimpses  which  his  mechanical 
inventions  afford  us  of  the  science  of  the  period,  as  well 
as  for  the  circumstances  of  his  checkered  career. 

Samuel  Morland  was  born  in  Berkshire  about  the  year 
1625.  He  received  his  education  at  Winchester  School 
and  Cambridge ;  he  remained  at  the  University  ten  years, 
but  never  took  a  degree.  Soon  after  leaving  college  he 
was  sent  on  the  famous  embassy  to  the  Queen  of  Sweden, 
in  company  with  Whitelocke,  who,  in  his  journal,  calls 
him  "  a  very  civil  man,  and  an  excellent  scholar."  On  his 
return  Morland  became  assistant  to  Thurloe,  the  secre- 
tary of  Oliver  Cromwell;  and  he  is  said  to  have  been 
privy  to  Sir  Richard  Willis's  plot  against  King  Charles, 
which  he  overheard  while  feigning  sleep  in  Thurloe's 
chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  which  he  divulged  to  the 
king,  who  made  him  a  knight,  and  soon  afterward  a  bar- 
onet. Morland  had  already  shown  his  genius  for  me- 
chanical science ;  and  on  the  Restoration,  Charles  made 
him  Master  of  Mechanics  to  his  majesty.  In  1677  he 
took  a  house  at  Vauxhall,  where  he  formed  a  large  col- 
lection of  mechanical  contrivances.  Morland  subsequent- 
ly removed  to  a  house  near  the  Thames,  at  Hammersmith, 
where  he  died  in  1695,  having  spent  his  last  three  years 
very  wretchedly.  Poverty  and  loss  of  sight  compelled 
him  to  rely,  almost  solely,  upon  the  charity  of  Archbishop 
Tenison. 

John  Evelyn,  in  his  Diary,  describes,  25th  of  October, 
1695,  his  visit  with  the  archbishop  to  Morland,  "who 
was  entirely  blind — a  very  mortifying  sight."  Evelyn 
says :  "  He  showed  us  his  invention  of  writing,  which 
was  very  ingenious ;  also  his  wooden  calendar,  which  in- 
structed him  all  by  feeling ;  and  other  pretty  and  useful 


THE    SPEAKING    TRUMPET.  157 

inventions  of  mills,  pumps,  etc. ;  and  the  pump  he  had 
erected,  that  serves  water  to  his  garden,  and  to  passen- 
gers, with  an  inscription,  and  brings  from  a  filthy  part 
of  the  Thames  near  it  a  most  perfect  and  pure  water." 

The  inscription  to  which  Evelyn  refers  was  a  stone 
tablet  fixed  in  the  wall,  and  is  still  preserved.  The  fol- 
lowing is  a  copy  of  it :  "  Sir  Samuel  Morland' s  Well,  the 
use  of  which  he  freely  gives  to  all  persons ;  hoping  that 
none  who  shall  come  after  him  will  adventure  to  incur 
God's  displeasure  by  denying  a  cup  of  cold  water  (pro- 
vided at  another's  cost,  and  not  their  own)  to  either  neigh- 
bor, stranger,  passenger,  or  poor  thirsty  beggar.  July 
8,  1695." 

Morland,  shortly  before  his  death,  as  a  penance  for  his 
past  life,  buried  in  the  ground,  six  feet  deep,  £200  worth 
of  music-books,  being,  as  he  said,  love-songs  and  vanity. 

From  some  correspondence  between  Morland  and  Dr. 
John  Pell,  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  it  appears 
that  Sir  Samuel,  as  early  as  1666,  had  intended  to  pub- 
lish a  work  on  the  quadrature  of  the  curvilinear  spaces, 
and  had  actually  printed  two  sheets  of  the  work,  when, 
by  the  advice  of  Dr.  Pell,  he  laid  it  aside.  About  this 
time  also  Morland  invented  his  Arithmetical  Machine, 
which  he  describes  in  a  small  work.  Its  operations  are 
conducted  by  means  of  dial-plates  and  small  indices,  mov- 
able with  a  steel  pin.  By  these  means  the  four  funda- 
mental rules  of  arithmetic  are  very  readily  worked,  and, 
to  use  the  author's  own  words,  "  without  charging  the 
memory,  disturbing  the  mind,  or  exposing  the  operations 
to  any  uncertainty."  His  "  Perpetual  Almanac"  is  given 
at  the  end,  which  was  often  printed  separately. 

We  are  indebted  to  Morland  for  the  Speaking  Trum- 
pet in  its  present  form.  The  ancient  contrivances  of  this 
kind  resembled  hearing  rather  than  speaking  trumpets. 
Some  have  considered  the  great  horn,  described  in  an 
old  manuscript  in  the  Vatican  Library  as  having  been 
used  by  Alexander  the  Great  to  assemble  his  army,  to  be 
the  oldest  speaking  trumpet  on  record ;  but  the  descrip- 
tion does  not  expressly  state  that  Alexander  spoke  through 
the  horn. 

Sir  Samuel's  claim  to  the  credit  of  the  invention  is 
warmly  contested  by  Athanasius  Kircher.  Morland,  in 


158  MORLAND'S  "  QUESTCH-FIRES." 

1671,  describes  his  invention  in  a  pamphlet  of  eight  pa- 

fes.  He  first  made  a  trumpet  of  glass  in  16 70,  by  which 
e  was  heard  speaking  at  a  very;  considerable  distance, 
when  it  considerably  multiplied  the  voice.  The  next  he 
made  was  of  brass,  about  4^  feet  long,  12  inches  in  diameter 
at  the  large  end,  and  only  2  inches  at  the  small  end ;  to 
which  was  affixed  a  mouth-piece,  "made  somewhat  after 
the  manner  of  bellows,"  to  move  with  the  mouth,  and 
thereby  prevent  the  escape  of  the  breath.  This  was 
tried  in  St.  James's  Park,  and  rendered  the  voice  audible 
at  a  distance  of  near  half  a  mile.  The  third  instrument 
was  of  copper,  recurved  in  the  form  of  a  common  trum- 
pet; its  total  length  was  16  feet  8  inches,  the  large  end 
19  inches,  and  the  small  end  2  inches  in  diameter:  with 
this  the  voice  was  heard  about  a  mile  and  a  half.  Mor- 
land  made  other  trumpets :  with  one  of  the  largest,  tried 
at  Deal  Castle,  the  voice  was  conducted  a  distance  of  be- 
tween two  and  three  miles  over  the  sea.  He  very  ex- 
cusably exaggerated  the  "  manifold  uses"  of  His  instru- 
ment, and  even  said  that  it  might  be  improved  so  as  to 
carry  the  voice  for  the  distance  of  ten  miles !  Kircher 
asserted  that  he  had  published  the  description  of  a 
speaking  trumpet  several  years  before  Morland's  pamphlet 
appeared;  but  his  invention  more  resembles  a  hearing 
trumpet,  and  he  does  not  appear  to  have  tried  a  proper 
speaking  trumpet  till  about  1673.  There  is  one  of  Sir 
Samuel's  original  trumpets  preserved  in  Trinity  College 
Library,  Cambridge,  about  six  feet  long,  in  bad  condition. 
In  an  advertisement  of  1671,  it  is  stated  that  Morland's 
"tubes"  were  sold  by  Moses  Pitt,  a  bookseller  in  St. 
Paul's  Church-yard,  at  the  price  of  £2  5s.  The  invention 
excited  much  general  interest  at  the  time,  so  Butler  makes 
Hudibras  say, 

"I  heard  a  formidable  voice, 

Loud  as  the  Stentophonic  noise." 

Morland  was  long  claimed  to  be  the  inventor  of  the  fire- 
engine  ;  but,  as  early  as  1590,  Cyprian  Lucar  described 
a  rude  fire-engine,  precisely  like  a  huge  squirt.  Evelyn 
also  mentions  a  fire-engine,  invented  by  Greatorix  in  1656, 
ten  years  before  he  saw  the  "  quench-fires,"  as  Morland's 
engines  were  called.* 

*  Morland's  invention  reminds  us  that  in  the  vestry  of  the  church 


MOBLAND    AND    STEAM.  159 

The  principal  objects  of  Sir  Samuel's  study  were  wa- 
ter-engines, pumps,  etc.,  which  he  carried  to  high  perfec- 
tion: his  pumps  brought  ivater  from  Blackmore  Park, 
near  Winkfield,  to  the  top  of  Windsor  Castle.  There  is 
in  the  Harleian  Collection  of  MSS.,  in  the  British  Muse- 
um, a  short  tract  on  the  steam-engine,  in  which  "  the 
Principles  of  the  New  Force  of  Fire,"  invented  by  Mor- 
land  in  1682,  are  thus  explained  : 

"  Water  being  converted  into  vapor  by  the  force  of 
fire,  these  vapors  shortly  require  a  larger  space  (about 
2000  times)  than  the  water  before  occupied,  and,  rather 
than  be  constantly  confined,  would  split  a  cannon ;  but, 
being  duly  regulated,  according  to  the  rules  of  status, 
and  by  science  reduced  to  measure,  weight,  and  balance, 
then  they  bear  their  load  peacefully  (like  good  horses), 
and  thus  become  of  great  use  to  mankind,  particularly 
for  raising  water,  according  to  the  following  table,  which 
shows  the  number  of  pounds  that  may  be  raised  1800 
times  per  hour  to  a  height  of  six  inches  by  cylinders  half 
filled  with  water,  as  well  as  the  different  diameters  and 
depths  of  the  said  cylinders." 

Then  follows  his  table  of  the  effects  of  different-sized 
cylinders.  This  indicates  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the 
subject ;  and,  to  Morland's  great  credit  also,  let  it  not  be 
forgotten  that  he  has  correctly  stated  the  increase  of  vol- 
ume that  water  occupies  in  a  state  of  vapor,  which  must 
have  been  the  result  of  experiment :  his  researches,  how- 
ever, seem  to  have  had  little  influence  on  the  progress  of 
the  practical  application  of  steam. 

In  one  of  his  letters  to  Archbishop  Tenison,  dated  28th 
of  July,  1688,  and  preserved  in  Lambeth  Palace,  it  ap- 
pears that  Morland  then  had  an  intention  of  publishing 
the  first  six  books  of  Euclid,  for  the  use  of  public  schools. 

Morland  is  said  to  have  written  a  Treatise  on  the  Ba- 
rometer :  he  is  also  said  to  have  invented  the  capstan  to 
heave  up  anchors ;  but  he  must  have  been  rather  the  im- 
prover than  the  inventor  of  that  machine. 

Morland's  house  at  Vauxhall  was  built  upon  the  site 

of  St.  Dionis  Backchurch,  Fenchurch  Street,  are  preserved  four  large 
syringes,  at  one  time  the  only  engines  used  in  London  for  the  extinc- 
tion of  fires :  they  are  about  2  feet  2  inches  long,  and  were  attached 
by  straps  to  the  bodies  of  the  firemen. 


160  MORLAND    AND   VAUXHALL    GARDENS. 

of  Vauxhall  Gardens,  which  appear  to  have  benefited 
from  his  inventive  genius.  Aubrey  tells  us  that  Sir  Sam- 
uel "  built  a  fine  room  at  Vaux-hall,  anno  1667,  the  inside 
all  of  Looking-glass,  and  Fountains  very  pleasant  to  be- 
hold, which  is  much  visited  by  Strangers ;  it  stands  in 
the  middle  of  the  Garden."  In  1675  he  obtained  a  lease 
of  Vauxhall  House;  and  about  the  year  1794  there  was 
removed  from  the  premises  a  lead  pump  inscribed  S.  M., 
1694.  The  room  mentioned  by  Aubrey  is  believed  to 
have  stood  where  the  orchestra  was  afterward  built ;  and 
it  was  probably  erected  by  Morland  for  the  entertain- 
ment of  Charles  II.,  when  he  visited  this  place  with  his 
ladies.  The  gardens  were  planted  with  trees,  and  laid 
out  in  walks  for  Sir  Samuel,  as  we  see  them  in  a  plan  of 
1681.  Their  embellishments  have,  from  the  earliest  date 
to  our  time,  consisted  of  whimsical  proofs  of  skill  in  me- 
chanics, such  as  Morland  indulged  in.  The  rococo  or- 
chestra, which  was  only  removed  on  the  clearance  of  the 
Gardens  in  the  autumn  of  1859,  had  plastic  ornaments  of 
a  composition  resembling  plaster  of  Paris,  but  known 
only  to  the  architect  who  designed  it.  The  model  pic- 
tures in  the  Gardens,  too,  had  their  mechanism,  as  arti- 
ficial cascades,  a  water-mill,  and  a  bridge  with  a  mail- 
coach  and  a  Greenwich  long-stage  passing  over ;  an  ani- 
mated cottage  scene,  with  figures  drinking  and  smoking 
by  machinery,  were  in  existence  in  1820 ;  and  bushes  and 
subterranean  musical  sounds  were  among  the  attractions 
— all  partaking  of  Morland's  taste,  which  in  the  present 
day  is  termed  polytechnic  ;  so  that  the  King's  Master  of 
Mechanics  may  have  originally  set  the  fashion  of  the  cu- 
riosities of  Yauxhall  Gardens,  which  existed  a  century 
and  a  half  after  Morland's  death. 


Edward,  Marquis  of  Worcester.    From  the  family  picture  by  Vandyck. 

THE  MARQUIS  OF  WORCESTER'S  "CENTU- 
EY  OF  INVENTIONS." 

As  the  tourist  passes  by  the  right  of  the  Abergavenny 
or  great  road  from  Monmouthshire  into  Wales,  he  will 
scarcely  fail  to  notice  the  picturesque  remains  of  Raglan 
Castle,  "the  most  perfect  decorated  strong-hold  of  which 
this  country  can  boast — a  romance  in  stone  and  lime." 
Its  historic  interest  can  be  traced  through  five  centuries ; 
but  its  culminating  point  was  during  the  time  of  Henry, 
fifth  Earl  and  first  Marquis  of  Worcester,  who,  in  his 
eighty-sixth  year,  made  here  a  desperate  struggle  in 
favor  of  King  Charles  I.,  Raglan  being  the  last  castle 
throughout  this  broad  realm  which  defied  the  power  of 
Cromwell.  In  1642  the  marquis  raised  and  supported 
an  army  of  1500  foot  and  near  500  horse  soldiers,  which 
he  placed  under  the  command  of  his  son,  Lord  Herbert, 
who,  Succeeding  his  father,  became  better  known  as  the 
Marquis  of  Worcester,  who  left  in  manuscript  the  Cen- 


162  THE   MARQUIS    OF    WORCESTER'S 

tury  of  Inventions.  During  the  civil  commotions  Charles 
made  several  visits  to  Raglan,  and  on  these  occasions 
particularly  distinguished  the  young  Lord  Herbert,  whom 
his  majesty  subsequently  invested  with  the  command  of 
a  large  body  of  troops.  His  bravery  and  devotedness 
to  the  royal  cause  led  to  his  being  commissioned  by  the 
king  in  Ireland,  failing  in  which  the  marquis  embarked 
for  France.  Meanwhile  Raglan  was  surrendered  to  the 
Parliamentary  forces :  we  do  not  hear  of  the  young  mar- 
quis until  1654,  when  we  find  him  attached  to  the  suite 
of  Charles  II.,  who  then  resided  at  the  court  of  France ; 
and  in  the  following  year  he  was  dispatched  by  the  exiled 
monarch  to  London  for  the  purpose  of  procuring  private 
intelligence  and  supplies  of  money,  of  which  the  king  was 
in  the  greatest  need.  Worcester  was,  however,  speedily 
discovered,  and  committed  a  close  prisoner  in  the  Tower, 
where  he  remained  in  captivity  for  several  years :  he  was 
set  free  at  the  Restoration.  Of  his  lordship's  private 
life  we  find  few  records.  He  probably  found  leisure  for 
the  scientific  pursuits  to  which  he  was  much  attached 
during  his  sojourn  in  France,  where  he  wrote  the  first 
manuscript  of  his  Century  of  Inventions,  the  notes  of 
which  he  appears  to  have  lost ;  but  he  rewrote  them,  it 
is  said  after  his  committal  to  the  Tower.  This  we  infer 
from  the  manuscript  now  in  the  possession  of  the  Beau- 
fort family,  which  opens  thus : 

"A 

CENTURY 

OP  THE 

NAMES  AND   SCANTLINGS 

OF  SUCH 

INVENTIONS 

As  at  present  I  can  call  to  mind  to  have  tried  and  perfected ;  which 
(my  former  notes  being  lost)  I  have,  at  the  instance  of  a  powerful 
friend,  endeavored  now,  in  the  year  1655,  to  set  these  down  in  such  a 
way  as  may  sufficiently  instruct  me  to  put  any  of  them  in  practice. 

Artis  et  Naturce  proles. " 

At  the  period  of  the  usurpation,  Worcester  House,  in 
the  Strand,*  the  London  residence  of  the  marquis,  was 
sold  by  Parliament ;  but  at  the  Restoration  it  reverted 
to  his  lordship,  who  leased  the  house  to  the  great  Lord 

*  Afterward  called  Beaufort  House,  upon  the  site  of  the*prescnt 
Beaufort  Buildings. 


"CENTURY  OP  INVENTIONS."  163 

Clarendon,  who  resided  here  until  the  erection  of  his 
new  house  at  the  top  of  St.  James's  Street. 

In  1663  appeared  the  first  edition  of  the  marquis's 
Century  of  Inventions  •  and  on  April  3,  in  the  same  year, 
a  bill  was  brought  into  Parliament  for  granting  to  Wor- 
cester and  his  successors  the  whole  of  the  profits  that 
might  arise  from  the  use  of  an  engine  described  in  the 
last  article  in  the  Century.  Lord  Orford  describes  this 
bill  to  have  passed  on  the  simple  affirmation  of  the  dis- 
covery that  he  (the  marquis)  had  made ;  but  the  journals 
of  the  Lords  and  Commons  for  1663-4  show  there  were 
no  less  than  seven  meetings  of  committees  on  the  subject, 
composed  of  some  of  the  most  learned  men  in  the  House, 
who,  after  considerable  amendments,  finally  passed  the 
bill  on  the  12th  of  May. 

There  is  anecdotic  evidence  of  at  least  the  latter  por- 
tion of  the  Century  being  written  by  the  author  while 
confined  in  the  Tower.  It  is  said  that  he  was  preparing 
some  food  in  his  apartment,  when  the  cover  of  the  vessel, 
having  been  closely  fitted,  was,  by  the  expansion  of  the 
steam,  suddenly  forced  off,  and  driven  up  the  chimney. 
This  circumstance,  attracting  the  marquis's  attention,  led 
him  to  a  train  of  thought  which  terminated  in  the  com- 
pletion of  the  above  invention,  which  he  denominated  a 
"  Water-commanding  Engine." 

Lord  Worcester's  engine  was  shown  in  operation; 
and  when  Cosmo  de'  Medici,  Grand-Duke  of  Tuscany, 
visited  England  in  1656  (at  which  time  the  marquis  was 
a  close  prisoner  in  the  Tower),  his  invention  was  exhib- 
ited at  Lambeth,  as  thus  recorded  in  the  Grand-Duke's 
Diary : 

His  Highness  went  "beyond  the  Palace  of  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury to  see  an  hydraulic  machine,  invented  by  my  Lord  Somerset, 
Marquis  of  Worcester.  It  raises  water  more  than  forty  geometrical 
feet  by  the  power  of  one  man  only,  and  in  a  very  short  space  of  time 
will  draw  up  four  vessels  of  water  through  a  tube  or  channel  not  more 
than  a  span  in  width." 

Precisely  four  years  after  the  bill  was  brought  into 
Parliament  for  securing  the  above  invention,  viz.,  upon 
April  3,  1667,  the  marquis  died  in  retirement  near  Lon- 
don, and  his  remains  were  conveyed  with  funeral  solem- 
nity to  the  vault  of  the  Beaufort  family  in  Raglan  Church. 


164  UA   CENTURY   OF   INVENTIONS." 

Worcester  has  been  illiberally  described  as  a  "  fantas- 
tic projector,"  and  Ms  Century*  as  "  an  amazing  piece  of 
folly."  But  Mr.  Partington,  in  his  edition  of  the  work 
published  in  1825,  has,  throughout  an  able  series  of  notes, 
fully  demonstrated  not  only  the  practicability  of  applying 
the  major  part  of  the  hundred  inventions  there  described, 
but  the  absolute  application  of  many  of  them,  though 
under  other  names,  to  some  of  the  most  useful  purposes 
of  life.  It  is  surely  injustice  and  ingratitude  to  apply 
the  name  of  a  "  fantastic  projector"  to  the  man  who  first 
discovered  a  mode  of  applying  steam  as  a  mechanical 
agent — an  invention  alone  sufficient  to  immortalize  the 
age  in  which  he  lived. 

Many  of  Worcester's  contrivances  have  since  been 
brought  into  general  use:  among  them  may  especially 
be  mentioned  stenography,  telegraphs,  floating  baths, 
speaking  statues,  carriages  from  which  horses  can  be 
disengaged  if  unruly,  combination  locks,  secret  escutch- 
eons for  locks,  candle-moulds,  etc. 

We  have  not  space  to  do  more  than  quote  the  table 
of  the  Inventions,  which  will  convey  some  idea  of  their 
great  variety : 

No.  No. 

1.  Seals    abundantly    signifi-  10.  How  to  be  fastened  from 
cant.  aloof  and  under  water. 

2.  Private   and   particular   to  11.  How  to  prevent  both, 
each  owner.  12.  An  unsinkable  ship. 

3.  A  one-line  cipher.  13.  False-destroying  decks. 

4.  Reduced  to  a  point.  14.  Multiplied  strength  in  little 

5.  Varied  significantly  to   all  room. 

the  twenty-four  letters.  15.  A  boat  driving  against  wind 

6.  A    mute    and   perfect   dis-    and  tide. 

course  by  colors.  16.  A  sea-sailing  fort. 

7.  To  hold  the  same  by  night.  17.  A  pleasant  floating  garden. 

8.  To  level  cannons  by  night.  18.  An  hour-glass  fountain. 

9.  A  ship-destroying  engine.  19.  A  coach-saving  engine. 

*  The  second  edition  of  the  Century  was  published  in  1746 ;  the 
third  in  1767 ;  the  fourth,  which  may  be  considered  as  the  best  edi- 
tion, is  a  reprint  from  the  first,  and  is  furnished  with  an  Appendix, 
"  containing  an  Historical  Account  of  the  Fire-engine  for  raising 
Water."  It  is  dated  Kyo,  near  Lancaster,  June  18,  1778.  The  fifth 
is  a  reprint  from  the  Glasgow  copy,  "by  W.  Bailey,  Proprietor  of  the 
Speaking  Figure,  now  showing,  by  permission  of  the  Right  Hon.  the 
Lord  Mayor,  at  No.  41,  within  Bishopsgate, "  1786.  The  sixth  edi- 
tion was  confined  to  100  copies,  and  dated  London,  1813. 


A   CENTURY    OF   INVENTIONS. 


165 


No. 

20.  A  balance  water-work. 

21.  A  bucket-fountain. 

22.  An    ebbing    and    flowing 
river. 

23.  An    ebbing    and    flowing 
castle  clock. 

24.  A      strength  -  increasing 
spring. 

25.  A  double-drawing   engine 
for  weights. 

26.  A  to-and-fro  lever. 

27.  A  most  easy  level  draught. 

28.  A  portable  bridge. 

29.  A  movable  fortification. 

30.  A  rising  bulwark. 

31.  An  approaching  blind. 

32.  A  universal  character. 

33.  A  needle  alphabet. 

34.  A   knotted  -  string    alpha- 
bet. 

35.  A  fringe  alphabet. 

36.  A  bracelet  alphabet. 

37.  A  pinked-glove  alphabet. 

38.  A  sieve  alphabet. 

39.  A  lantern  alphabet. 

40.  An  alphabet  by  the  smell. 

41.  "  "         taste. 

42.  "  "          touch. 

43.  A  variation  of  all  and  each 
of  these. 

44.  A  key-pistol. 

45.  A  most  conceited  tinder- 
box. 

46.  An  artificial  bird. 

47.  An  hour  water-ball. 

48.  A  screwed  ascent  of  stairs.* 

49.  A  tobacco-tongs  engine. 

50.  A  pocket-ladder. 

51.  A  rule  of  gradation. 

52.  A    mystical    jangling    of 
bells. 

53.  A  hollowing  of  a  water- 
screw. 

54.  A  transparent  water-screw. 

55.  A  double  water-screw. 


No. 

56.  An   advantageous   change 
of  centres. 

57.  A  constant  water  flowing 
and  ebbing  motion. 

58.  An  often-discharging  pis- 
tol. 

59.  An  especial  way  for  cara- 
bines. 

60.  A  flask  charger. 

61.  A  way  for  muskets. 

62.  A  way  for  a  harquebus,  a 
crock,  or  ship-musket. 

63.  For  sakers  and  minyons. 

64.  For  the  biggest  cannon. 

65.  For  a  whole  side  of  ship- 
muskets. 

66.  For  guarding  several  ave- 
nues to  a  town. 

67.  For  musketoons  on  horse- 
back. 

68.  A  fire  water-work. 

69.  A  triangle  key. 

70.  A  rose  key. 

71.  A  square  key  with  a  turn- 
ing screw. 

72.  An  escutcheon  for  all  locks. 

73.  A  transmittible  gallery. 

74.  A  conceited  door. 

75.  A  discourse  woven  on  tape 
or  ribbon. 

76.  To  write  in  the  dark. 

77.  A  flying  man. 

78.  A  continually-going  watch. 

79.  A  total  locking  of  cabinet 
boxes. 

80.  Light  pistol-barrels. 

81.  A  comb  conveyance  for  let- 
ters. 

82.  A  knife,  spoon,  or  fork  con- 
veyance. 

83.  A  rasping  mill. 

84.  An     arithmetical     instru- 
ment. 

85.  An  tmtoothsome  pear. 

86.  An  imprisoning  chair. 


*  Most  probably  the  geometrical  staircase  now  in  general  use,  with 
the  addition  of  a  small  flight  of  stairs  in  the  centre,  in  lieu  of  the 
common  hand-rail,  which,  being  surrounded  by  a  partition  of  boards, 
would  serve  as  a  private  communication  to  the  upper  stories. — Part- 
ington. 


166 


A   CENTURY    OF   INVEOTIONS. 


No. 

87.  A  candle-mould. 

88.  A  coining  engine. 

88.  A  brazen  head. 

89.  Primero  gloves. 

90.  A  dicing  box. 

91.  An  artificial  ring-horse. 

92.  A  gravel  engine. 

93.  A  ship-raising  engine. 

94.  A  pocket  engine  to  open 
any  door. 

95.  A  double  cross-bow. 

96.  A  way  for  sea-banks. 

97.  A  perspective  instrument. 

98.  An    engine    so    contrived 
that  working  the  primum  mobile 
forward  or  backward,  upward  or 
downward,  circularly  or   corner- 
wise,  to  and  fro,  straight,  upright 
or   downright,  yet   the   pretend- 
ed operation  continueth  and  ad- 
vanceth;    none    of  the   motions 


diameter.  And  I  may  boldly  call 
it  the  most  stupendous  work  in  the 
whole  world,  not  only  with  little 
charge  to  drain  all  sorts  of  mines, 
and  furnish  cities  with  water, 
though  never  so  high  seated,  as 
well  as  to  keep  them  sweet,  run- 
ning through  several  streets,  and 
so  performing  the  work  of  scav- 
engers, as  well  as  furnishing  the 
inhabitants  with  sufficient  water 
for  their  private  occasions ;  but 
likewise  supplying  the  rivers  with 
sufficient  to  maintain  and  make 
navigable  from  town  to  town,  and 
for  the  bettering  of  lands  all  the 
way  it  runs ;  with  many  more  ad- 
vantageous, and  yet  greater  effects 
of  profit,  admiration,  and  conse- 
quence ;  so  that  deservedly  I  deem 
this  invention  to  crown  my  labors, 


to  reward  my  expenses,  and  make 

above-mentioned  hindering,  much  mv  thoughts  acquiesce  in  way  of 
less  stopping,  the  other  ;  but  unan-  farther  inventions.  This  making 
imously,  and  with  harmony  agree-  up  tiie  whole  Century,  and  pre- 
ing,  they  all  augment  and  con- 
tribute strength  unto  the  intended 
work  and  operation ;  and  therefore 
I  call  this  a  semi-omnipotent  engine, 
and  do  intend  that  a  model  there- 
of be  buried  with  me. 

99.  How  to  make   one  pound 
weight  to  raise  one  hundred  as 
high  as  one  pound  falleth,  and  yet 
the  hundred  pounds   descending 
doth  what  nothing  less  than  one 
hundred  pounds  can  effect. 

100.  Upon  so  potent  a  help  as 
these  two  last-mentioned  inven- 
tions, a  water-work  is,  by  many 
years'   experience    and   labor,  so 
advantageously  by  me  contrived, 
that  a  child's  force  bringeth  up  an 
hundred  feet  high  an  incredible 


venting  any  farther  trouble  to  the 
reader  for  the  present,  meaning  to 
leave  to  posterity  a  book,  wherein, 
under  each  of  these  heads,  the 
means  to  put  in  execution  and 
visible  trial  all  and  every  of  these 
inventions,  with  the  shape  and 
form  of  all  things  belonging  to 
them,  shall  be  printed  by  brass 
plates.  Besides  many  omitted, 
and  some  of  three  sorts  willingly 
not  set  down,  as  not  fit  to  be  di- 
vulged, lest  ill  use  may  be  made 
thereof,  but  to  show  that  such 
things  are  also  within  my  knowl- 
edge, I  will  here  in  myne  owne 
cypher  sett  downe  one  of  each, 
not  to  be  concealed  when  duty 
and  affection  obligeth  me. 


quantity  of  water,  even  two  feet 

The  last  three  inventions,  says  Mr.  Partington,  may 
justly  be  considered  as  the  most  important  of  the  whole 
Century  /  and  when  united  with  the  68th  article,  they 
appear  to  suggest  nearly  all  the  data  essential  for  the 
construction  of  a  modern  steam-engine.  The  68th  article 
is  as  follows : 


THE    MARQUIS    OF    WORCESTER.  167 

An  admirable  and  most  forcible  way  to  drive  up  water  by  fire,  not 
by  drawing  or  sucking  it  upward,  for  that  must  be,  as  the  philosopher 
calleth  it,  infra  sphceram  activitatis,  which  is  but  at  such  a  distance. 
But  this  way  hath  no  bounder,  if  the  vessels  be  strong  enough  ;  for  I 
have  taken  a  piece  of  a  whole  cannon,  whereof  the  end  was  burnt,  and 
filled  it  three  quarters  full,  stopping  and  screwing  up  the  broken  end, 
as  also  the  touch-hole ;  and  making  a  constant  fire  under  it,  within 
twenty-four  hours  it  burst,  and  made  a  great  crack ;  so  that  having 
found  a  way  to  make  my  vessels  so  that  they  are  strengthened  by  the 
force  within  them,  and  the  one  to  fill  after  the  other,  have  seen  the 
water  run  like  a  constant  fountain  stream  forty  feet  high  ;  one  vessel 
of  water,  rarefied  by  fire,  driveth  up  forty  of  cold  water ;  and  a  man 
that  tends  the  work  is  but  to  turn  two  cocks,  that  one  vessel  of  water 
being  consumed,  another  begins  to  force  and  refill  with  cold  water, 
and  so  successively,  etc. 

The  marquis  has  also  furnished  us  with  a  "  Definition" 
of  the  above  engine,  which  is  exceedingly  rare,  as  the 
only  copy  known  to  be  extant  is  preserved  in  the  British 
Museum.  It  is  printed  on  a  single  sheet,  without  date, 
and  appears  to  have  been  written  for  the  purpose  of  pro- 
curing subscriptions  for  a  Water  Company  then  about 
to  be  established.  The  invention  is  described  as 

"A  stupendous,  or  a  water-commanding  engine,  boundless  for  height 
or  quantity,  requiring  no  external,  nor  even  additional  help  or  force 
to  be  set  or  continued  in  motion  but  what  intrinsically  is  afforded  from 
its  own  operation,  nor  yet  the  twentieth  part  thereof.  And  the  engine 
consisteth  of  the  following  particulars : 

"A  perfect  counterpoise  for  what  quantity  soever  of  water. 

"A  perfect  countervail  for  what  height  soever  it  is  to  be  brought 
unto. 

"  A  primum  mobile,  commanding  both  height  and  quantity,  regu- 
lator-wise. 

"A  vicegerent,  or  countervail,  supplying  the  place  and  performing 
the  fnll  force  of  man,  wind,  beast,  or  mill. 

"A  helm,  or  stern,  with  bit  and  reins,  wherewith  any  child  may 
guide,  order,  and  control  the  whole  operation. 

"  A  particular  magazine  for  water,  according  to  the  intended  quan- 
tity or  height  of  water. 

"An  aqueduct,  capable  of  any  intended  quantity  or  height  of 
water. 

"A  place  for  the  original  fountain  or  river  to  run  into,  and  natu- 
rally of  its  own  accord,  incorporate  itself  with  the  rising  water,  and  at 
the  very  bottom  of  the  aqueduct,  though  never  so  big  or  high. 

"By  divine  Providence  and  heavenly  inspiration,  this  is  my  stu- 
pendous water-commanding  engine,  boundless  for  height  and  quantity. 

' '  Whosoever  is  master  of  weight  is  master  of  force ;  whosoever  is 
master  of  water  is  master  of  both,  and,  consequently,  to  him  all  forci- 
ble actions  and  achievements  are  easie." 


168  THE   MABQUIS    OF    WORCESTEK. 

Among  the  documents  in  the  possession  of  the  Duke 
of  Beaufort  is  the  following  impressive  memorial  of  the 
success  of  the  engine,  and  the  pious  gratitude  of  the  in- 
ventor : 

The  Lord  Marquesse  of  Worcester's  ejaculatory  and  extemporary  thanks- 
giving Prayer,  when  first  with  his  corporal  eyes  he  did  see  finished  a 
perfect  trial  of  his  Water-commanding  Engine,  delightful  and  useful 
to  whomsoever  hath  in  recommendation  either  knowledge,  profit,  or 
pleasure. 

Oh  infinitely  omnipotent  God  !  whose  mercies  are  fathomlesse,  and 
whose  knowledge  is  immence  and  inexhaustible,  next  to  my  creation 
and  redemption  I  render  thee  most  humble  thanks  from  the  very  bot- 
tom of  my  heart  and  bowels  for  thy  vouchsafing  me  (the  meanest  in 
understanding)  an  insight  in  soe  great  a  secret  of  nature,  beneficent 
to  all  mankind,  as  this  my  water-commanding  engine.  Suffer  me 
not  to  be  puffed  upp,  O  Lord,  by  the  knowing  of  it,  and  many  more 
rare  and  unheard  off,  yea,  unparalleled  inventions,  tryals,  and  experi- 
ments ;  but  humble  my  "haughty  heart  by  the  true  knowledge  of  myne 
own  ignorant,  weake,  and  unworthy  nature  :  proane  to  all  evill,  O  most 
mercifull  Father  my  creator,  most  compassionating  Sonne  my  redeem- 
er, and  Holyest  of  Spiritts,  the  sanctifier,  three  diuine  persons  and  one 
God,  grant  me  a  further  concurring  grace  with  fortitude  to  take  hould 
of  thy  goodnesse,  to  the  end  that  whatever  I  doe,  unanimously  and 
courageously  to  serve  my  kind  and  country,  to  disabuse,  rectifie,  and 
convert  my  undeserved,  yet  wilfully  incredulous  enemyes,  to  reim- 
burse thankfully  my  creditors,  to  reimmunerate  my  benefactors,  to 
reinhearten  my  distressed  family,  and  with  complaisance  to  gratifie 
my  suffering  and  confiding  friends,  may,  voyde  of  vanity  or  selfe  ends, 
be  only  directed  to  thy  honor  and  glory  everlastingly.  Amen. 

As  the  pensive  tourist  strays  amid  the  desolate  courts 
and  roofless  halls  of  Raglan,  or  views  from  its  battle- 
ments the  golden  glories  of  sunset,  he  may  reflect  upon 
the  vicissitudes  of  the  noble  owners  of  this  "  famous  cas- 
tle fine ;"  and  should  the  visitor  extend  his  walk  to  the 
burial-place  of  the  Beauforts  in  Raglan  Church,  he  will 
there  see  the  arched  stone  vault  which  enshrines  the  re- 
mains of  Edward,  Marquis  of  Worcester. 

Of  his  greatest  invention  no  record  has  been  pre- 
served beyond  the  articles  to  which  reference  has  been 
made  in  the  present  precis  of  his  labors  ;  but  in  our  day 
Professor  Millington  has  designed  an  engine  on  similar 
principles,  and  which,  with  a  few  alterations,  might  be 
made  available  for  the  purposes  recommended  by  our 
author. 

In  the  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Arts,  vol.  iii., 


THE    "CENTUKY.  169 

p.  6,  is  recommended  to  the  attention  of  every  mechanic 
the  Century,  "  which,  on  account  of  the  seeming  im- 
probability of  discovering  many  things  mentioned  there- 
in, has  been  too  much  neglected ;  but  when  it  is  consid- 
ered that  some  of  the  contrivances,  apparently  not  the 
least  abstruse,  have  by  close  application  been  found  to 
answer  all  that  the  marquis  says  of  them,  and  that  the 
first  hint  of  that  most  powerful  machine,  the  Steam- 
engine,  is  given  in  that  work,  it  is  unnecessary  to  enlarge 
on  the  utility  of  it." 

H 


GEORGE  GEAHAM  AND  HIS  IMPROVE- 
MENT OF  THE  WATCH. 

THE  improvement  of  Clocks  by  the  application  of  the 
pendulum  was  not  more  essential  than  the  improvement 
in  Watches  by  the  application  of  the  balance-spring. 
The  honor  of  this  invention  is  claimed  by  three  very 
eminent  men — Huyghens,  a  Dutchman ;  the  Abbe  Haute- 
feuille,  a  Frenchman;  and  our  own  countryman,  Dr. 
Hooke.  The  balance-spring  was  soon  universally  ap- 
plied, and  even  watches  on  the  old  construction  were 
altered  to  receive  it. 

It  was  now  found  that  the  old  vertical  escapement 
(still  used  in  common  watches)  did  not  produce  sufficient 
accuracy.  Hooke,  Huyghens,  Hautefeuille,  and  Tom- 
pion,  therefore,  introduced  new  principles;  but  as  nei- 
ther succeeded,  probably  from  imperfect  execution,  the 
old  crown-wheel  was  again  adopted. 

The  talent  and  perseverance  of  these  great  men  were 
not,  however,  lost,  as  each  of  their  principles  has  since 
been  successfully  applied.  Huyghens's  escapement  is 
used  in  producing  the  motion  of  the  well-known  bottle- 
jack;  Hautefeuille's  escapement  appeared  about  sixty 
years  ago,  under  the  name  of  the  patent  (rack)  lever ; 
and  Hooke's  idea  has  since  been  fully  developed  in  the 
duplex  escapement. 

The  first  real  improvement  in  escapements  was  made 
by  Graham.  This  is  called  the  horizontal  or  cylinder 
escapement ;  it  was  introduced  in  the  beginning  of  the 
last  century,  and  has  been  successfully  applied  up  to  the 
present  time. 

George  Graham  was  born  at  Horsgill,  in  Kirklington, 
Cumberland,  in  1675,  of  parents  belonging  to  the  Society 
of  Friends.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  was  apprenticed 
to  Mr.  Tompion,  the  celebrated  watchmaker,  who  kept 
shop  at  the  corner  of  Water  Lane,  Fleet  Street.  Graham 
soon  evinced  inventive  fitness  for  the  art  he  had  chosen, 
conjoined  with  straightforward  character  and  high  prin- 


ciple — qualities  which  endeared  him  to  his  master,  who 
treated  him  like  his  own  offspring.  By  his  inventive 
skill  and  careful  work  Graham  became  an  excellent 
watchmaker  and  mechanician ;  and,  by  obtaining  a  sound 
knowledge  of  practical  astronomy,  he  perfected  several 
means  for  the  nice  measurement  of  time,  and  invented 
astronomical  instruments  of  first-rate  precision  and  accu- 
racy. This  was  an  era  in  the  history  of  clockwork.  The 
expansion  and  contraction  of  metal  had  been  known 
above  fifty  years ;  and  although  the  use  of  the  clock  for 
astronomical  purposes  demanded  some  compensation  for 
the  lengthening  and  shortening  of  the  pendulum  by  heat 
and  cold,  art  had  not  supplied  this  desideratum,  until,  in 
the  year  1715,  Graham,  by  substituting  ajar  of  mercury 
for  the  pendulum  ball,  succeeded  in  retaining  the  point 
of  suspension  and  the  centre  of  oscillation  at  the  same 
distance  from  each  other.  To  guard  against  breakage 
of  this  pendulum,  Graham  provided  the  opposite  expan- 
sions of  different  metals  as  a  compensation  by  the  dead- 
beat  escapement,  with  which,  and  a  gridiron,  or  mercu- 
rial pendulum,  having  a  heavy  ball  moving  in  a  very 
small  arc  of  vibration,  time-keepers  are  made  whose  av- 
erage variation  is  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  second  daily. 

These  inventions  still  continue  to  be  employed,  in  all 
their  early  simplicity,  in  the  construction  of  the  best  as- 
tronomical clocks  of  the  present  day.  Graham's  hori- 
zontal escapement  is  still  extensively  used  in  the  Swiss 
and  Geneva  watches ;  but  in  the  better  sort  of  those  of 
English  manufacture  it  has  been  superseded  by  the  du- 
plex, and  recently  by  the  lever,  which  is  nothing  more 
than  the  application  of  Graham's  dead-beat  escapement 
to  the  watch,  though  patents  have  been  taken  out  by  va- 
rious persons  who  have  claimed  the  invention.* 

The  excellence  of  Graham's  work  is  attested  by  the 
south  mural  quadrant,  which  was  made  under  his  inspec- 
tion, and  divided  by  his  own  hand,  for  Dr.  Halley,  at  the 
Royal  Observatory,  Greenwich.  He  also  invented  a  sec- 
tor, with  which  Dr.  Bradley  discovered  two  new  motions 
in  the  fixed  stars ;  and  Graham  supplied  with  instru- 
ments the  French  academicians  in  their  voyage  to  the 
North  Pole,  to  ascertain  the  figure  of  the  earth.  Gra- 

*  Additions  to  Beckmann's  Hist.  Inventions,  etc.,  vol.  i.,  4th  edit. 


172  THE    OKKEKY   INVENTED. 

ham's  watches  were  highly  prized.  It  is  related  that 
when  the  French  mathematician,  Maupertuis,  was  made 
prisoner  at  the  battle  of  Molwitz,  and  taken  to  Vienna, 
the  Grand-Duke  of  Tuscany,  afterward  emperor,  treated 
him  with  much  kindness,  and  asked  him  whether  he  re- 
gretted the  loss  of  any  particular  portion  of  his  property 
which  the  hussars  had  taken  from  him.  Being  much 
pressed,  the  philosopher  acknowledged  that  he  wished  to 
save  a  watch  by  Graham,  of  which  he  had  made  use  in 
his  astronomical  observations.  The  duke  also  had  one 
by  the  same  maker,  but  enriched  with  diamonds :  "  See," 
said  the  duke,  taking  the  watch  from  his  pocket,  "  it  was 
but  a  joke ;  they  have  brought  it  to  me,  and  I  now  re- 
turn it." 

Julien  le  Roy,  the  celebrated  French  horologist,  also 
bore  testimony  to  the  perfection  of  Graham's  watches. 
In  1728  he  procured  one,  said  to  be  the  first  horizontal 
watch  seen  in  Paris :  it  was  presented  to  Maupertuis  aft- 
er having  been  fully  proved  by  Le  Roy.  Graham  dis- 
tinguished himself  as  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society :  he 
was  also  one  of  the  discoverers  of  the  very  remarkable 
fact  of  the  contemporaneous  occurrence  of  magnetic  dis- 
turbances over  large  portions  of  the  earth's  surface.  This 
discovery  was  made  on  the  5th  of  April,  1741,  by  the  pre- 
concerted observations  of  Celsius  at  TJpsala  and  Graham 
in  London.*  The  investigation  of  this  phenomenon  has 
since  been  pursued  with  great  success,  especially  by  the 
establishment  of  magnetic  observatories,  first  proposed 
by  the  illustrious  Humboldt. 

Desaguliers  believes  Graham,  about  the  year  1700,  to 
have  first  invented  a  movement  for  exhibiting  the  mo- 
tion of  the  earth  about  the  sun  at  the  same  time  that  the 
moon  revolved  round  the  earth.  This  machine  being  in 
the  hands  of  the  instrument-maker,  to  be  sent  with  some 
other  instruments  to  Prince  Eugene,  he  copied  it,  and 
made  the  first  for  the  Earl  of  Orrery,  and  then  several 
others,  with  additions  of  his  own.  Sir  Richard  Steele, 
who  knew  nothing  of  Graham's  machine,  in  one  of  his 

*  Its  rediscovery  in  the  present  century  is  due  to  a  series  of  corre- 
sponding observations  undertaken  by  Arago  in  Paris  and  Kupffer  in 
Kasan,  in  the  years  1825  and  1826. — WELD'S  History  of  the  Royal 
Society,  vol.  ii.,  p.  438. 


GRAVE    OP   TOMPION   AND    GKAIIAM.  173 

lucubrations,  thinking  to  do  justice  to  the  first  encour- 
ager  as  well  as  to  the  first  inventor  of  such  a  curious  in- 
strument, called  it,  after  the  earl,  an  Orrery,  and  gave 
Mr.  J.  Rowley  the  praise  due  to  Mr.  Graham.* 

We  find,  however,  earlier  mention  of  an  Orrery  than 
the  above,  in  the  Journal  of  Dr.  Rowland  Davies,  Dean 
of  Ross  (printed  for  the  Camden  Society,  in  1857).  The 
entry,  under  1689,  is  as  follows : 

December  \±th.  In  the  evening  Mr.  Milbourn  came  and  sat  with 
me,  and  showed  me  an  account  of  an  automaton  projected  and  made 
by  Mr.  Watson,  of  Coventry,  whereby  all  the  stars'  motions  and  plan- 
ets were  exactly  represented  in  clockwork,  and  all  the  problems  and 
observations  in  astronomy  therein  fully  answered. 

Graham  continued  his  useful  labors  for  the  benefit  of 
science  till  his  death  at  his  house  in  Fleet  Street  in  1751. 
He  was  buried  in  the  nave  of  Westminster  Abbey,  in  the 
same  grave  with  his  friend  and  master  Tompion;  and 
over  their  remains  was  placed  a  slab,  with  the  following 
inscription : 

"Here  lies  ye  body  of  Thomas  Tompion,  who  died  November  20th, 
1713,  aged  75.  Also  Geo.  Graham,  watchmaker,  and  F.K.S.,  whose 
curious  inventions  do  honor  to  ye  British  genius,  whose  accurate  per- 
formances are  ye  standard  of  mechanic  skill.  He  died  ye  16th  of 
November,  1751,  in  ye  78th  of  his  age." 

*  The  machine  has  since  retained  the  name,  and  its  invention  has 
often  been  attributed  to  Lord  Orrery,  from  its  being  named  after  his 
lordship.  Orreries  have  been  constructed  by  several  ingenious  per- 
sons. There  died  lately  in  Scotland  Mr.  John  Fulton,  a  native  of 
Fenwick.  He  was  a  self-taught  artist,  and  constructed  a  beautiful 
Orrery,  which  was  greatly  admired  in  the  principal  towns  of  England 
and  Scotland,  where  it  was  exhibited.  Hence  the  maker  was  called 
"  Fulton  of  the  Orrery. "  He  was  a  working  shoemaker  in  his  native 
village,  of  scanty  means  and  education,  yet  by  dint  of  application  dur- 
ing his  leisure  hours  he  executed  the  above  instrument  with  the  great- 
est accuracy  and  finish.  He  afterward  removed  to  London,  and  was 
employed  in  the  establishment  of  Mr.  Bate,  the  well-known  mathe- 
matical instrument-maker  in  the  Poultry,  where  his  ingenuity  and 
skill  were  fully  demonstrated  in  making  theodolites  for  the  Pacha  of 
Egypt,  and  balances  for  the  Royal  Mint.  Fulton  also  applied  him- 
self, almost  unaided,  to  the  study  of  languages :  he  became  a  good 
French  scholar,  a  proficient  in  the  German  language,  a  student  of 
Greek,  with  a  considerable  knowledge  of  Italian.  His  modesty,  his 
unassuming  manners,  his  generosity,  his  patience,  his  perseverance, 
and  his  piety,  obtained  for  him  a  high  place  in  the  estimation  of  his 
friends.  His  health  failed  him  through  excessive  application,  and  a 
lingering  illness  brought  him  to  a  comparatively  early  death. 


174  GBAYE    OP   TOMPION   AND    GEAHAM. 

But  this  memorial  no  longer  exists,  it  having  been  taken 
up,  in  1839,  by  order  of  the  dean.  Mr.  Adam  Thomson, 
in  his  interesting  volume  on  Time  and  Time-keepers, 
1842,  says:  "Watchmakers,  the  writer  among  the  num- 
ber, until  prevented  by  recent  restrictions,  were  in  the 
habit  of  making  frequent  pilgrimages  to  the  sacred  spot : 
from  the  inscription  and  the  place  they  felt  proud  of 
their  occupation,  and  many  a  secret  wish  to  excel  has 
arisen  while  silently  contemplating  the  resting-place  of 
the  two  men  whose  memory  they  so  much  revered. 
Their  memory  may  last,  but  the  slab  is  gone.  Who 
would  suppose  that  on  a  small  lozenge-shaped  bit  of 
marble  was  all  that  was  left  to  indicate  where  lie  the 
bodies  of  'the  Father  of  Clockmaking,'  Thomas  Tom- 
pion,  and  c  Honest  George  Graham ;'  greater  benefactors 
to  mankind  than  thousands  whose  sculptured  urns  impu- 
dently emblazon  merits  that  never  existed?"  Graham 
was  a  man  of  strict  integrity,  and  of  kind  and  generous 
nature.  Many  pleasant  anecdotes  are  related  of  his  aids 
to  science  in  communicating  to  others  in  the  same  path 
the  results  of  his  own  experiments.  In  money-matters 
he  was  liberal  and  open-handed ;  and  rather  than  invest 
his  savings,  he  kept  them  in  the  house,  ever  ready  to  re- 
lieve the  necessities  of  deserving  applicants.  These  are 
traits  of  loving-kindness  which  require  no  monumental 
marble  to  perpetuate  their  memory. 

There  is  not,  probably,  any  example  of  human  skill 
which  demands  higher  qualifications  than  a  perfect  watch. 
And  Berthoud  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  tells  us  that 
"  to  become  a  good  watchmaker  it  is  necessary  to  be  an 
arithmetician,  in  order  to  find  the  revolutions  of  each 
wheel;  a  geometrician,  to  determine  the  curve  of  the 
teeth ;  a  mechanician,  to  find  the  forces  that  must  be  ap- 
plied ;  and  an  artist,  to  be  able  to  put  into  execution  the 
principles  and  rules  which  these  sciences  prescribe :  he 
must  know  how  fluids  resist  bodies  in  motion,  the  effects 
of  heat  and  cold  on  different  metals,  and,  in  addition  to 
these  acquirements,  he  must  be  endowed  by  nature  with 
a  happy  genius." 


JOHN"  HAERISON"  AND  THE  LONGITUDE 
WATCH. 

THE  method  of  ascertaining  Longitude  by  means  of 
the  Watch  is  briefly  as  follows.  If  a  navigator  has  a 
chronometer  showing  him  the  exact  time  at  Greenwich, 
the  instant  that  the  sun  comes  to  his  meridian  it  is  twelve 
o'clock,  and  the  difference  between  this  time  and  the 
hour  marked  by  the  chronometer  gives  him  his  Longi- 
tude ;  or,  when  the  time  is  known  at  which  any  particu- 
lar star  passes  the  meridian  at  Greenwich,  if  the  naviga- 
tor marks  the  instant  at  which  the  star  comes  to  his 
meridian,  the  difference  between  this  time  and  the  time 
it  would  appear  at  Greenwich  is  the  difference  in  Longi- 
tude. 

This  problem  had,  however,  been  but  inaccurately 
solved  for  want  of  good  watches.  Huyghens  is  supposed 
to  have  been  the  first  who  thought  of  constructing  time- 
keepers for  this  purpose;  but  at  that  period,  1664,  suffi- 
cient attention  had  not  been  paid  to  the  effects  produced 
on  metals  by  the  variations  of  temperature  in  different 
climates,  and  he  unfortunately  failed  in  his  experiments. 
Maritime  nations  had  already  promised  rewards  to  any 
one  who  should  make  the  discovery.  In  1598,  Philip 
III.  of  Spain  offered  a  prize  of  1000  crowns ;  the  Dutch 
followed  this  example ;  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  Regent  of 
France,  offered  in  the  name  of  the  king  100,000  livres; 
and  the  French  Academy  awarded  annually  a  prize  to 
those  who  made  the  most  useful  discoveries  connected 
with  the  subject.  The  English,  being  the  greatest  navi- 
gators, were  most  interested;  and  in  1714,  Parliament 
appointed  a  committee  to  consider  the  question,  foremost 
of  whom  was  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  who  at  once  suggested 
the  discovery  of  the  Longitude  by  the  dial  of  an  accurate 
time-keeper ;  and,  upon  their  recommendation,  the  Legis- 
lature of  Queen  Anne,  in  1714,  passed  an  act  granting 
£10,000  if  the  method  found  discovered  the  longitude  to 
a  degree,  or  60  geographical  miles,  £15,000  if  to  40  miles, 


176  THE   FIEST   MARINE   CHRONOMETER. 

and  £20,000  if  to  30  miles,  to  be  determined  by  a  voyage 
from  a  port  in  Great  Britain  to  any  port  in  America.  At 
length,  after  the  golden  promises  of  sovereigns,  and  the 
researches  of  the  greatest  philosophers  of  the  age  had 
for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  failed  in  the  great  discov- 
ery, it  was  made  by  a  self-taught  genius,  who  was  bred 
a  village  carpenter,  and  never  acquired  any  acquaintance 
with  literature. 

John  Harrison  was  bom  at  Faulby,  near  Pontefract,  in 
Yorkshire,  in  1693  ;  he  was  the  son  of  a  carpenter,  which 
occupation  he  followed  for  several  years:  yet  he  very 
early  manifested  a  taste  for  mathematical  science,  said  to 
have  been  first  awakened  by  a  copy  of  some  lectures  of 
Saunderson  the  blind  mathematician,  that  accidentally 
fell  into  his  hands.  He  was  also  fond  of  mechanical 
pursuits;  and  before  he  was  twenty-one  he  had  made 
two  wooden  clocks  by  himself,  and  without  having  re- 
ceived any  instruction  in  the  art.  His  residence  in  view 
of  the  sea  is  said  to  have  led  him  to  devote  himself  to  the 
construction  of  marine  time-pieces,  and  in  1728  he  first 
came  up  to  London  to  prosecute  this  object;  in  1736  he 
completed  the  first  chronometer  used  at  sea:  it  neither 
varied  from  change  of  temperature  nor  the  motion  of  the 
vessel.  Having  obtained  certificates  of  its  excellence 
from  Halley,  Graham,  and  others,  this  time-keeper  was 
placed  on  board  a  ship  of  war  going  to  Lisbon,  the  cap- 
tain of  which  attested  that  Harrison  had  corrected  an 
error  of  about  a  degree  and  a  half  upon  their  return  to 
the  English  Channel.  The  Parliamentary  Commission- 
ers now  presented  Harrison  with  £500,  to  enable  him  to 
proceed  with  his  experiments.  In  1739  he  produced  a 
smaller  chronometer,  which  promised  to  give  the  longi- 
tude with  even  greater  accuracy.  In  1741  he  finished 
another  smaller  than  either,  which  the  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society  considered  to  be  more  simple,  and  less 
likely  to  be  deranged;  and  in  1749  Harrison  received 
the  Society's  gold  medal. 

Having  much  improved  and  corrected  this  third  chro- 
nometer, Harrison  claimed  a  trial  of  it ;  and  the  commis- 
sioners accordingly,  in  1761,  sent  out  his  son  William  in 
a  king's  ship  to'jamaica.  After  eighteen  days'  naviga- 
tion, the  vessel  was  supposed  to  be  13°  50'  west  of  Ports- 


HARRISON'S  LONGITUDE  WATCH.  177 

mouth,  while  the  watch,  marking  15°  19' was  condemned 
as  useless.  Harrison,  however,  maintained  that,  if  Port- 
land Island  were  correctly  marked  on  the  chart,  it  would 
be  seen  on  the  following  day;  in  this  he  persisted  so 
strongly  that  the  captain  was  induced  to  continue  in  the 
same  course,  and  accordingly  the  island  was  discovered 
the  next  day.  This  raised  Harrison  and  his  watch  in  the 
•estimation  of  the  crew,  who  otherwise  would  not  have 
been  able  to  procure  the  necessary  stores  during  the  re- 
mainder of  the  voyage.  In  like  manner,  Harrison  was 
enabled  by  his  watch  to  announce  all  the  islands  in  the 
order  in  which  they  would  fall  in  with  them.  On  his 
arrival  at  Port  Royal,  after  a  voyage  of  eighty-one  days, 
the  chronometer  was  found  to  be  about  five  seconds  slow ; 
and  on  his  return  to  Portsmouth,  after  a  voyage  of  five 
months,  it  had  kept  time  within  about  one  minute  five 
seconds,  which  gives  an  error  of  about  eighteen  miles. 
This  was  much  within  the  limits  of  thirty  miles  prescribed 
by  the  act  of  1714,  and  Harrison  claimed  the  reward; 
but  several  objections  being  taken  to  the  proofs,  William 
Harrison  made  a  second  voyage,  which  left  no  farther 
doubt  of  Harrison's  claim,  his  chronometer  having  de- 
termined the  position  of  Barbadoes  within  the  limits 
prescribed  by  the  act.  The  sum  of  £20,000  was  then 
awarded  to  him— £10,000  immediately  on  his  explaining 
the  principle  of  construction,  the  other  half  on  its  being 
ascertained  that  the  chronometer  could  be  made  by  oth- 
ers. Liberal  as  this  reward  appears,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  Harrison  devoted  upward  of  forty  years  be- 
fore his  inventions  were  perfected,  or  their  general  merit 
fully  established.  The  most  important  of  these  improve- 
ments are  the  gridiron  pendulum  and  the  expansion 
balance-wheel ;  the  one  serving  to  equalize  the  move- 
ments of  a  clock,  and  the  other  those  of  a  watch,  under 
all  changes  of  temperature,  and  both  depending  upon  the 
unequal  stretching,  under  change  of  temperature,  of  two 
different  metals,  which  are  so  employed  to  form  the  rod 
of  the  pendulum  and  the  circumference  of  the  wheel,  that 
the  contraction  of  the  one  exactly  counterbalances  the 
expansion  of  the  other.*  Another  of  Harrison's  impor- 

*  An  interesting  account  of  the  trial  of  Harrison's  Watch  at  the 
112 


178  BEWARDS   FOB   CHBONOMETEBS. 

tant  inventions  is  the  going  fusee,  by  which  a  watch  can 
be  wound  up  without  interrupting  its  movement.  This 
curious  machine,  as  well  as  the  other  time-keepers  of 
Harrison,  is  still  preserved  at  the  Royal  Observatory, 
Greenwich.  Being  discovered  there  in  a  very  dilapidated 
state  several  years  ago,  it  was  put  in  repair  at  the  ex- 
pense of  Messrs.  Arnold  and  Dent.  Excepting  the  es- 
capement-wheel, all  the  wheels  were  of  wood — merely 
flat  disks  with  wooden  teeth.  The  pinions  also  were  of 
wood.  Mr.  Dent  states  that  the  arrangements  for  obvi- 
ating friction  were  so  admirable,  that  on  the  removal  of 
part  of  the  escapement  the  train  of  wheels  ran  down  with 
great  velocity,  although  they  had  not  revolved  for  more 
than  a  century  before. 

Harrison  died  at  his  house  in  Red  Lion  Square  in 
1776,  in  his  eighty-third  year.  On  mechanics,  and  sub- 
jects connected  with  that  science,  he  could  converse 
clearly ;  but  he  found  great  difficulty  in  expressing  his 
sentiments  in  writing,  as  is  evident  from  a  work  which 
he  left  on  the  construction  of  time-pieces.  Still,  his  labors 
present  a  remarkable  instance  of  what  natural  genius  can 
accomplish  in  one  particular  line  without  cultivation. 

It  should,  however,  be  added,  that  the  complexity  of 
Harrison's  time-keeper,  and  its  high  price,.  £400,  left  to 
be  invented,  for  practical  purposes,  an  instrument  of 
greater  simplicity,  in  the  time-keeper  of  John  Arnold, 
for  which  he  and  his  son  received  the  government  re- 
ward of  £3000.*  In  this  machine  each  part  performs 
unchecked  the  office  assigned  to  it ;  and  its  extreme  vari- 

Royal  Observatory,  Greenwich,  and  the  general  method  of  rating 
Marine  Chronometers,  will  be  found  in  the  Curiosities  of  Science,  by 
the  author  of  the  present  work,  p.  229-232. 

*  Arnold  is  celebrated  for  the  manufacture  of  the  smallest  repeat- 
ing watch  ever  known :  it  was  made  for  George  III.,  to  whom  it  was 
presented  on  his  birthday,  June  4,  1764.  Although  less  than  six 
tenths  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  it  repeated  the  hours,  quarters,  and 
half  quarters,  and  contained  the  first  ruby  cylinder  ever  made.  It  is 
the  size  of  a  silver  twopenny  piece,  and  its  weight  that  of  a  sixpence. 
So  novel  was  its  construction,  that  Arnold  not  only  designed  and  ex- 
ecuted the  work  himself,  but  had  to  manufacture  the  greater  part  of  the 
tools  employed  in  its  construction.  The  king  presented  500  guineas 
to  Mr.  Arnold  for  this  curious  watch :  and  the  Emperor  of  Russia  af- 
terward offered  the  maker  1000  guineas  for  a  duplicate  of  it,  which  he 
declined. 


REWARDS   FOR   CHRONOMETERS.  179 

ation  in  twelve  months  has  been  57  hundredths  only.  It 
is  therefore  highly  honorable  to  the  English  artists,  that 
by  their  ingenuity  and  skill  they  have  accomplished  the 
great  object  which  had  occupied  the  attention  of  the 
learned  of  Europe  for  nearly  300  years,  namely,  the  means 
of  discovering  the  Longitude  at  Sea. 

In  1793  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  gave 
to  Thomas  Mudge,  a  London  watchmaker  (or  to  his  son 
for  him),  in  opposition  to  the  opinion  of  the  Board  of 
Longitude,  a  reward  of  £3000  for  inventing  a  remontoire 
escapement  for  chronometers,  "not  worth  a  farthing," 
says  Mr.  E.  B.  Denison,  "  and,  as  indeed  it  turned  out, 
worth  a  great  deal  less  to  his  son,  who  proceeded  to 
make  the  chronometer."  Mr.  Denison  maintains  that 
Thomas  Earnshaw  brought  the  chronometer  to  the  state 
in  which  it  has  remained  for  the  last  eighty  years,  with 
scarcely  any  alteration :  the  chronometers  of  inferior 
artists  were  always  beaten  by  his  whenever  they  came 
into  competition,  and  these  artists  afterward  copied 
Earnshaw's  inventions,  and  did  their  best  to  prevent  his 
being  rewarded  for  them. 

The  English  chronometers,  on  the  whole,  enjoy  a  repu- 
tation superior  to  those  of  any  other  nation ;  neverthe- 
less, the  latter  have  attained  high  excellence.  One  of 
the  New  York  chronometers  supplied  to  the  Grinnell 
Arctic  Expedition  was  subjected  to  all  sorts  of  exposure 
to  which  such  instruments  are  liable  in  a  Polar  winter, 
but  was  so  exquisitely  provided  with  adjustments  and 
compensations  for  the  very  great  extremes  of  tempera- 
ture to  which  it  had  been  subjected,  that  it  was  returned 
with  a  change  in  its  daily  rate,  during  a  year  and  a 
half,  of  only  the  eighteen  thousandth  part  of  one  second 
of  time.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  tempera- 
ture registered  during  the  winter  in  Wellington  Straits 
was  actually  46°  below  zero.* 

*  Alderman  Carter,  elected  Lord-mayor  of  London  in  1859,  is  a 
very  successful  chronometer-maker,  having  received  several  govern- 
ment rewards. 


DK.  WILLIAM  HARVEY  AND   THE   CIRCU- 
LATION OF  THE  BLOOD. 

THE  discovery  which  has  given  an  imperishable  glory 
to  the  name  of  Harvey  places  him  in  the  highest  rank  of 
natural  philosophers.  "The  same  services  which  New- 
ton afterward,  rendered  to  optics  and  astronomy  by  his 
theories  of  light  and  gravitation,  Harvey  conferred  upon 
anatomy  and  medicine  by  his  true  doctrine  of  the  Circu- 
lation of  the  Blood."* 

The  early  life  of  Harvey,  and  the  opportunities  of  his 
education,  led  him  step  by  step  in  the  brilliant  career  of 
his  investigation,  till  it  was  finally  crowned  with  success. 
He  was  descended  from  a  respectable  family  in  the 
county  of  Kent,  and  was  born  at  Folkestone  on  the  1st 
of  April,  1578,  in  a  house  of  fair  stone,  which  Harvey 
left  by  will,  together  with  some  land  adjoining,  to  Caius 
College,  Cambridge.  At  ten  years  of  age  he  was  sent 
to  the  Grammar  School  in  Canterbury,  and  having  there 
laid  a  proper  foundation  of  classical  learning,  was  re- 
moved to  Gonville  and  Cains  College,  Cambridge,  and 
admitted  as  a  pensioner  in  May,  1593.  After  spending 
five  years  at  the  University,  he  went  abroad  for  the  ac- 
quisition of  medical  knowledge ;  and,  traveling  through 
France  and  Germany,  fixed  himself,  in  his  twenty-third 
year,  at  Padua  University.  Here  he  attended  with  the 
utmost  diligence  the  lectures  of  Fabricius  ab  Aquapen- 
dente,  the  Professor  of  Anatomy.  He  taught  the  exist- 
ence of  valves  in  all  the  veins  of  the  body ;  and  from 
that  moment  Harvey  endeavored  to  discover  the  use  of 
these  valves,  his  success  in  which  inquiry  was  the  found- 
ation of  his  after  fame.  He  took  his  doctor's  degree  at 
Padua  in  1602,  when  he  was  only  twenty-four  years  of 
age;  in  the  same  year  he  returned  to  England,  again 
graduated  at  Cambridge,  and  settled  in  the  practice  of 
his  profession  in  London.  In  1604  he  was  admitted  of 
*  Pettigrew's  Life  of  Harvey. 


THE    CIRCULATION    OF   THE   BLOOD.  181 

the  College  of  Physicians;  and  in  1615,  when  thirty- 
seven  years  old,  he  was  appointed  reader  of  the  anatom- 
ical and  surgical  lectures  at  the  College.  He  now  serious- 
ly prosecuted  his  researches  on  the  Circulation  of  the 
Blood,  and  it  was  in  the  course  of  these  lectures  that  he 
first  publicly  announced  his  new  doctrines;  but  many 
years  of  experimental  verification  elapsed  before  he  ven- 
tured to  commit  these  doctrines  to  the  press.  Never- 
theless, there  is  historical  evidence  to  prove  that,  al- 
though Harvey  discovered  the  fact  of  the  Circulation  of 
the  Blood,  he  did  not  discover  the  course  nor  the  causes 
of  the  circulation.  He  knew  that  the  blood  was  carried 
from  the  heart  through  the  arteries  to  the  tissues,  and 
from  the  tissues,  through  the  veins  and  lungs,  back  again 
to  the  place  whence  it  started.  But  he  knew  not  how 
the  blood  passed  from  arteries  to  veins ;  he  knew  not 
why  the  blood  thus  moved.  In  our  day,  science  is  in 
possession  of  the  exact  course  of  the  circulation  ;  but  the 
exact  causes  are  still  under  question.  We  know  that 
the  circulating  system  consists  of  heart,  arteries,  capil- 
laries, veins,  and  lymphatics.  Harvey  knew  not  the 
capillaries  and  lymphatics,  so  that  his  knowledge  of  the 
course  taken  by  the  blood  was  necessarily  incomplete. 
To  form  an  estimate  of  what  Harvey  actually  discovered, 
we  will  first  take  a  rapid  view  of  the  Circulation. 

"  The  heart,  as  the  great  centre,  shall  be  our  point  of 
departure.  It  is  composed  of  four  cavities :  two  ante- 
chambers, or  auricles,  and  two  chambers,  or  ventricles. 
Into  the  right  auricle  the  blood  is  poured  by  the  veins ; 
it  passes  thence  into  the  right  ventricle,  and  is  driven 
therefrom  by  a  strong  contraction  along  the  pulmonary 
artery  into  the  lungs.  Here  it  comes  in  contact  with  the 
oxygen  of  the  atmosphere,  and  changes  from  venous  into 
arterial  blood.  It  now  passes  along  the  pulmonary  veins 
into  the  left  auricle  of  the  heart,  thence  into  the  left 
ventricle,  from  which  it  is  driven  by  a  powerful  contrac- 
tion into  the  arteries.  The  pulsing  torrent  rushes  through 
the  arteries  to  the  various  tissues,  where  it  passes  into 
the  net-work  of  capillary  vessels.  Having  served  the 
purposes  of  nutrition,  the  blood  continues  its  course 
along  these  capillaries  into  the  veins.  Here  the  stream 
is  joined  by  that  of  the  lymphatics,  which,  like  the  roots 


182  HARVEY'S  DISCOVEEY. 

of  a  plant  in  the  earth,  absorb  lymph  from  the  organs  in 
which  they  arise.  This  confluence  of  streams  hurries  on 
till  the  blood  is  emptied  into  the  right  auricle,  from 
which  it  originally  started,  and  thus  is  the  circle  com- 
pleted."* 

The  story  of  Harvey's  discovery  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting and  instructive  in  the  whole  range  of  science. 
Its  episodes  extend  over  not  less  than  seventeen  cen- 
turies ;  and  the  two  centuries  that  have  elapsed  since 
Harvey's  discovery  have  not  sufficed  entirely  to  complete 
it.  Three  capital  errors,  for  sixteen  centuries,  masked 
the  fact  of  circulation.  The  first  was,  that  the  arteries 
did  not  contain  blood.  The  second  error  was,  that  the 
two  chambers  of  the  heart  communicated  with  each 
other  by  means  of  holes  in  the  septum  dividing  them. 
The  third  error  was,  that  the  veins  carried  the  blood  to 
the  various  parts  of  the  body.  The  first  of  these  errors 
was  in  part  set  aside  by  Galen's  proving  that  the  arteries 
did  carry  blood ;  but  the  composition  of  the  atmosphere 
being  unknown  in  his  days,  it  remained  for  modern  sci- 
ence to  prove  that  atmospheric  air  is  not  contained  in 
the  arteries,  but  only  the  oxygen  thereof,  with  a  slight 
amount  of  nitrogen  and  a  certain  amount  of  carbonic  acid 
gas.  The  second  assertion,  of  the  holes  in  the  septum, 
was  disproved  in  1543  by  Vesalius,  the  father  of  modern 
anatomy.  The  third  error,  that  of  the  veins  carrying 
the  blood  to  the  tissues,  was  disproved  by  Michael 
Servetus  showing  that  the  two  bloods,  venous  and  arte- 
rial, pass  one  into  the  other  in  the  lungs,  or  by  the  pul- 
monary circulation.  This  he  showed  in  a  work  which 
was  burned  by  the  theologians ;  and  Servetus  himself 
was  subsequently  burned  for  speculations  of  another 
kind.  Two  copies  of  Servetus's  work  still  exist:  one, 
reddened  and  partly  consumed  by  the  flames,  is  in  the 
Imperial  Library  of  Paris.  Nothing  can  be  less  equivo- 
cal than  its  description  of  the  passage  of  the  blood  from 
the  heart  to  the  lungs,  where  it  is  agitated,  prepared, 
changes  its  color,  and  is  poured  from  the  pulmonary 
artery  into  the  pulmonary  vein.  Still,  this  was  but  a 
lucky  guess,  without  influence,  and  soon  forgotten.  Six 
years  afterward  Realdo  Colombo  rediscovered  the  pul- 

*  Blaclavood 's  Edinburgh  Magazine,  No.  514. 


HARVEY'S    DISCOVERT.  183 

monary  circulation ;  4  and  then  Csesalpinus,  the  great  bot- 
anist, unaware  of  what  Colombo  had  written,  announced 
the  same  discovery,  and  was  the  first  to  pronounce  the 
phrase  "  Circulation  of  the  Blood." 

But  nearly  every  thing  remained  for  Harvey  to  dis- 
cover. So  far  from  any  one  having  had  a  clear  idea  of 
the  true  theory,  no  one  had  even  accurately  conceived 
the  true  theory  of  pulmonary  circulation ;  for,  although 
Servetus,  Colombo,  and  Csesalpinus  knew  that  the  blood 
passed  through  the  lungs,  they  fancied  only  so  much 
passed  as  was  necessary  for  the  reception  of  the  "  vital 
spirits;"  a  quantity  which  their  predecessors  fancied 
took  its  course  through  the  perforated  septum  of  the 
heart.  But  they  had  no  conception  of  the  entire  mass 
of  blood  traversing  the  lungs. 

The  finding  that  the  veins  had  valves,  opening  and 
closing  like  doors,  brought  the  discovery  of  the  Circula- 
tion within  compass.  It  was  made  in  1574  by  Fabricius, 
under  whom  Harvey  studied  at  Padua.  These  valves, 
preventing  any  flow  from  the  heart,  but  admitting  the 
flow  to  the  heart,  ought  to  have  suggested  to  their  dis- 
coverer the  true  interpretation  of  their  use;  but  five- 
and-forty  years  elapsed  before  any  one  arose  who  had 
the  sagacity  to  perceive  the  real  value  of  this  anatomical 
structure  in  respect  to  the  blood-currents.  Meanwhile, 
although  every  thing  that  had  been  discovered  or  sur- 
mised respecting  the  Circulation  was  familiar  to  every 
anatomist  of  the  great  Paduan  school  in  which  Harvey 
studied,  nevertheless,  when  he  promulgated  his  theory, 
it  was  vehemently  opposed.  No  one  except  Harvey 
had,  for  nearly  half  a  century,  seen  the  significance  of 
the  fact ;  and  he  not  only  conceived  a  clear  idea  of  the 
process,  but  described  it  minutely  and  accurately.  He 
noticed  the  successive  contractions  of  each  auricle  and 
ventricle,  which  forced  the  blood  into  the  ventricle  when 
the  auricle  contracted,  and  forced  it  from  the  ventricle 
into  the  lungs  when  the  ventricle  contracted — a  process 
repeated  on  the  left  side  with  the  aerated  blood.  And 
at  each  passage  of  the  blood  from  one  cavity  to  another, 
there  were  the  valves,  or  "  little  doors,"  opening  to  let 
the  current  pass,  and  closing  to  prevent  its  reflux.  He 
described  the  course  of  the  blood  along  the  arteries, 


184  OVERTHROW   OF   GALEN. 

which  he  attributed  to  the  pulsations  of  the  heart ;  and 
in  this,  instead  of  Galen's  "pulsific  virtue,"  he  recog- 
nized the  cause  of  the  blood's  movement. 

The  overthrow  of  ancient  authority  was  now  complet- 
ed. Men  dared  no  longer  swear  by  Galen ;  they  swore  by 
Harvey,  who  had  discovered  the  greatest  fact  in  the  ani- 
mal economy — a  fact  totally  unknown  and  unsuspected 
by  Galen,  or  any  other  ancient.  The  opposition  to  the 
new  system  was  loud  and  vehement,  but  it  has  been 
greatly  exaggerated  by  historians.  It  is  true  that  the 
Faculty  rejected  the  doctrine,  but  eminent  men  accepted 
it.  If  Guy  Patin  was  caustic  in  opposition,  Moliere 
laughed  at  Guy  Patin's  prejudice,  and  Boileau  ridiculed 
the  Faculty.  Some  anatomists  accepted  the  doctrine, 
and  the  great  Descartes  warmly  espoused  it.  Swam- 
merdam  and  Malpighi,  two  of  the  greatest  names  of  the 
century,  speak  of  Harvey  with  reverence ;  and  soon  no 
one  spoke  of  him  in  any  other  tone.  Among  his  admir- 
ers was  the  writer  of  certain  verses,  "  To  the  Incompara- 
ble Dr.  Harvey,  on  his  Book  of  the  Motion  of  the  Heart 
and  Blood,"  in  which  these  lines  occur : 

"  There  didst  thou  trace  the  blood,  and  first  behold 
What  dreams  mistaken  sages  coined  of  old. 
For  till  thy  Pegasus  the  fountain  brake, 
The  crimson  blood  was  but  a  crimson  lake, 
"Which  first  from  thee  did  tyde  and  motion  gaine, 
And  veins  became  its  channel,  not  its  chaine. 
With  Drake  and  Ca'endish  hence  thy  bays  are  curl'd, 
Famed  circulator  of  the  lesser  world." 

But  the  epithet  circulator,  in  its  Latin  invidious  signifi- 
cation (quack),  was  applied  to  Harvey  by  many  in  deris- 
ion. To  an  intimate  friend  he  complained  that,  after  his 
book  of  the  Circulation  came  out,  he  fell  considerably  in 
his  practice,  and  it  was  believed  by  the  vulgar  that  he 
was  crack-brained.  Nevertheless,  about  twenty-five  years 
after  the  publication  of  his  system,  it  was  received  in  all 
the  universities  of  the  world ;  and  Hobbes  has  observed 
that  Harvey  was  the  only  man,  perhaps,  who  ever  saw 
his  own  doctrines  established  in  his  lifetime. 

The  course  of  the  Circulation  was  not,  however,  known 
to  Harvey,  nor,  with  the  means  at  his  disposal,  could  he 
have  traced  it.  The  Microscope  was  needed ;  and  the 


RESEARCHES    WITH   THE   MICROSCOPE.  185 

first  to  employ  this  instrument  in  such  researches  was 
Malpighi,  who,  four  years  after  Harvey's  death,  in  1661, 
detected  those  capillaries  which  form  the  channel  of  com- 
munication between  the  arteries  and  veins.  Nevertheless, 
in  1668,  Leuwenhoeck  describes  them  as  if  they  had  been 
previously  quite  unknown :  this  was  in  the  tail  of  a  tad- 
pole. "A  sight  presented  itself,"  says  Leuwenhoeck, 
"  more  delightful  than  any  that  my  eyes  had  ever  beheld, 
for  here  I  discovered  more  than  fifty  circulations  of  the 
blood  in  different  places.  I  saw  that  not  only  the  blood 
in  many  places  was  conveyed,  through  exceedingly  mi- 
nute vessels,  from  the  middle  of  the  tail  toward  the  edges, 
but  that  each  of  these  vessels  had  a  curve  or  turning,  and 
carried  the  blood  back  toward  the  middle  of  the  tail,  in 
order  to  be  conveyed  to  the  heart.  Hereby  it  appeared 
plainly  to  me  that  the  blood-vessels  I  now  saw  in  this 
animal,  and  which  bear  the  names  of  arteries  and  veins, 
are,  in  fact,  one  and  the  same — that  is  to  say,  that  they 
are  properly  termed  arteries  so  long  as  they  convey  the 
blood  to  the  farthest  extremities  of  its  vessels,  and  veins 
when  they  bring  it  back  toward  the  heart."  Thus,  then, 
was  the  demonstration  of  the  course  of  the  blood  com- 
pleted ;  and  we  must  confess  that  it  is  with  surprise  we 
find  all  historians  overlooking  the  great  gap  in  the  doc- 
trine which  had  been  left  by  Harvey — a  gap  only  filled 
up  by  Malpighi  and  Leuwenhoeck  in  their  discovery  of 
those  capillaries  forming  the  true  passage  of  arterial  to 
venous  blood. 

Harvey  was  appointed  physician  to  Charles  I.,  and  was 
in  the  habit  of  exhibiting  to  him  and  the  most  enlighten- 
ed persons  of  his  court  the  motion  of  the  heart,  and  the 
other  phenomena  upon  which  his  doctrines  were  found- 
ed.* During  the  Civil  War  he  traveled  with  the  king ; 
and,  while  staying  a  short  time  in  Oxford,  was  made  by 
him  Master  of  Merton  College,  and  received  the  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Medicine.  He  held  the  mastership  only  for 
a  few  months,  when  he  was  displaced  by  the  Parliament- 
ary party,  his  house  was  plundered,  and  several  unpub- 
lished works,  of  which  we  have  only  notices  in  his  other 
writings,  were  destroyed.  He  and  his  brother,  who  was 

*  Mr.  Hannah  has  painted  this  scene  with  excellent  effect :  it  has 
been  engraved. 


186  CAUSE   OF  THE   CIRCULATION. 

a  Turkey  merchant,  drank  coffee  before  coffee- houses 
came  into  fashion  in  London.  His  visits  to  his  patients 
he  made  on  horseback,  with  a  footcloth,  his  man  follow- 
ing on  foot,  in  the  same  way  in  which  the  judges  were 
then  accustomed  to  ride  to  Westminster  Hall.  In  1654 
he  was  elected  President  of  the  College  of  Physicians ; 
but,  from  age  and  infirmities,  he  declined  the  office.  He 
died  June  3,  1657,  in  the  eightieth  year  of  his  age,  and 
was  buried  at  Hampstead,  in  Essex,  wrhere  he  is  lapped 
in  lead,  and  on  his  breast  in  large  letters  was  to  be  read, 
DK.  WILLIAM  HAKVEY.  There  is  a  fine  portrait  of  Har- 
vey by  Jansen  in  the  library  of  the  College  of  Physicians ; 
here  also  are  preserved  some  of  the  nerves  and  blood-ves- 
sels used  by  Harvey  in  his  lectures  on  the  Circulation, 
which  he  delivered  in  the  house  of  the  College,  then  in 
Amen  Corner :  he  built  also  a  Museum  in  the  adjoining 

farden,  upon  the  site  of  the  present  Stationers'  Hall. 
he  old  College  buildings  were  destroyed  in  the  Great 
Fire.  The  Harveian  Oration  (in  Latin)  is  delivered  an- 
nually by  a  Fellow,  usually  on  June  25. 

The  real  cause  of  the  Circulation,  however,  remains  to 
be  established.  That  the  heart  pumps  blood  incessantly 
into  the  arteries,  and  thus  drives  the  stream  onward  with 
great  force,  there  is  no  doubt.  This,  however,  is  not  the 
sole  agent.  Professor  Draper  supplies  the  answer  by 
an  hypothesis  grounded  on  a  well-known  physical  law, 
namely,  that  if  two  fluids  communicate  in  a  capillary 
tube  which  have  different  degrees  of  affinity  for  the 
walls  of  that  tube,  the  fluid  having  the  highest  affinity 
for  the  tube  will  drive  the  other  fluid  before  it.  The 
two  fluids  in  the  blood-vessels  are  arterial  and  venous, 
and  the  greater  affinity  of  the  arterial  blood  for  the  ve- 
nous tissues  causes  it  to  drive  the  venous  blood  onward. 

In  conclusion,  Professor  Draper's  hypothesis  is  briefly 
this :  The  arterial  blood  has  an  affinity  for  the  tissues, 
which  causes  it  to  press  forward  in  the  capillaries ;  and 
no  sooner  is  that  affinity  satisfied,  than  the  blood  be- 
comes venous,  and  is  pressed  forward  by  the  advancing 
column.  In  the  lungs  venous  blood  presses  forward  to 
satisfy  its  affinity  for  the  oxygen  which  is  in  the  air; 
having  satisfied  this,  and  become  arterial,  it  is  pressed  on 
by  the  advancing  column. 


THE   CIRCULATION    OP   THE   BLOOD.  187 

The  reader  who  is  desirous  of  pursuing  this  subject 
more  in  detail  is  referred  to  an  able  exposition  in  Black- 
wood's  Edinburgh  Magazine,  No.  514,  p.  148-164  — 
"  Circulation  of  the  Blood,  its  Course  and  History ;"  the 
writer  availing  himself  of  M.  Flourens'  Histoire  de  la 
Decouverte  de  la  Circulation  du  Sang,  1854,  and  com- 
pleting his  labors  by  a  masterly  reasoning  upon  this  very 
curious  and  intricate  subject.  To  this  paper  we  are 
mainly  indebted  for  the  facts  and  new  views  in  the  pres- 
ent article. 


DR.  JENNER  AND  HIS  DISCOVERY  OF 
VACCINATION. 

FEW  of  the  many  thousand  ills  which  human  flesh  is 
heir  to  have  spread  such  devastation  among  the  family 
of  man  as  Small-pox.  Its  universality  has  ranged  from 
the  untold  tribes  of  savages  to  the  silken  baron  of  civil- 
ization, and  its  ravages  on  life  and  beauty  have  been 
shown  in  many  a  sad  tale  of  domestic  suffering.  To  stay 
the  destroying  hand  of  such  a  scourge,  which  by  some 
has  been  identified  with  the  Plague  of  Athens,  was  re- 
served for  a  genial  spirit  of  our  time — such  a  benefactor 
to  his  species  was  Edward  Jenner,  the  discoverer  of 
Vaccination. 

The  great  fact  can,  however,  be  traced  half  a  century 
before  Jenner's  time.  In  the  Journal  of  John  Byrom, 
F.R.S.,  under  June  3,  1*725,  it  is  recorded  that, 

"  At  a  meeting  of  the  Royal  Society,  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
presiding,  Dr.  Jurin  read  a  case  of  Small-pox,  where  a 
girl  who  had  been  inoculated  and  had  been  vaccinated 
was  tried  and  had  them  not  again ;  but  another  [a]  boy, 
caught  the  small-pox  from  this  girl,  and  had  the  conflu- 
ent kind  and  died." 

This  case  occurred  at  Hanover.  The  inoculation  of 
the  girl  seems  to  have  failed  entirely ;  it  was  suspected 
that  she  had  not  taken  the  true  small-pox  :  doubts,  how- 
ever, were  removed,  as  a  boy,  who  daily  saw  the  girl,  fell 
ill  and  died,  "  having  had  a  very  bad  small-pox  of  the 
confluent  sort."  This  is  the  first  use  of  the  word  Vac- 
cination, or,  more  familiarly,  Cow-pox,  which  is  an  erup- 
tion arising  from  an  insertion  into  the  system  of  matter 
obtained  from  the  eruption  on  the  teats  and  udders  of 
cows,  and  especially  in  Gloucestershire:  it  is  also  fre- 
quently denominated  vaccine  matter  /  and  the  whole  af- 
fair, inoculation  and  its  consequences,  is  called  Vaccina- 
tion, from  the  Latin  vacca,  a  cow. 

It  is  admitted  that  Jenner's  merit  lay  in  the  scientific 
application  of  his  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  the  chapped 


EAVAGES    OF    SMALL-POX.  189 

hands  of  milkers  of  cows  sometimes  proved  a  preventive 
of  small-pox,  and  from  those  of  them  whom  he  endeav- 
ored to  inoculate  resisting  the  infection.  These  results 
were  probably  known  far  beyond  Jenner's  range,  and 
long  before  his  time ;  for  we  have  respectable  testimony* 
of  their  having  come  within  the  observation  of  a  Cheshire 
gentleman,  who  had  been  informed  of  them  shortly  after 
settling  on  his  estate  in  Prestbury  parish  in  or  about 
1740.  This  does  not  in  the  least  detract  from  Jenner's 
merit,  but  shows  that  to  his  genius  for  observation,  anal- 
ogy, and  experiment  we  are  indebted  for  this  application 
of  a  simple  fact,  only  incidentally  remarked  by  others, 
but  by  Jenner  rendered  the  stepping-stone  to  his  great 
discovery,  or,  in  other  words,  extending  its  benefits  from 
a  single  parish  in  Gloucestershire  to  the  whole  world. 

We  agree  with  a  contemporary  that,  "  among  all  the 
names  which  ought  to  be  consecrated  by  the  gratitude 
of  mankind,  that  of  Jenner  stands  pre-eminent.  It  would 
be  difficult,  we  are  inclined  to  say  impossible,  to  select 
from  the  catalogue  of  benefactors  to  human  nature  an  in- 
dividual who  has  contributed  so  largely  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  life  and  to  the  alleviation  of  suffering.  Into 
whatever  corner  of  the  world  the  blessing  of  printed 
knowledge  has  penetrated,  there  also  will  the  name  of 
Jenner  be  familiar ;  but  the  fruits  of  his  discovery  have 
ripened  in  barbarous  soils,  where  books  have  never  been 
opened,  and  where  the  savage  does  not  pause  to  inquire 
from  what  source  he  has  derived  relief.  No  improve- 
ment in  the  physical  sciences  can  bear  a  parallel  with 
that  which  ministers  in  every  part  of. the  globe  to  the 
prevention  of  deformity,  and,  in  a  great  proportion,  to 
the  exemption  from  actual  destruction."! 

The  ravages  which  the  Small-pox  formerly  committed 
are  scarcely  conceived  or  recollected  by  the  present  gen- 
eration. An  instance  of  death  occurring  after  vaccina- 
tion is  now  eagerly  seized  and  commented  upon;  yet 
seventy  years  have  not  elapsed  since  this  disease  might 
fairly  be  termed  the  scourge  of  mankind,  and  an  enemy 
more  extensive  and  more  insidious  than  even  the  plague. 

*  Notes  and  Queries,  No.  278. 

f  Mr.  Pettigrew,  in  his  Lives  of  British  Physicians  and  Surgeons, 
1830. 


190  JENNER'S  EARLY  LIFE. 

A  family  blighted  in  its  fairest  hopes  through  this  terri- 
ble visitation  was  an  every-day  spectacle:  the  imperial 
house  of  Austria  lost  eleven  of  its  offspring  in  fifty  years.* 
This  instance  is  mentioned  because  it  is  historical;  but 
in  the  obscure  and  unrecorded  scenes  of  life  this  pest 
was  often  a  still  more  merciless  intruder.f 

Edward  Jenner  was  the  third  son  of  the  Vicar^  of 
Berkeley,  in  Gloucestershire,  where  he  was  born  May 
17th,  1749.  Before  he  was  nine  years  of  age  he  showed 
a  growing  taste  for  natural  history  in  forming  a  collec- 
tion of  the  nests  of  the  dormouse ;  and  when  at  school 
at  Cirencester  he  was  fond  of  searching  for  fossils,  which 
abound  in  that  neighborhood.  He  was  articled  to  a  sur- 
geon at  Sudbury,  near  Bristol,  and  at  the  end  of  his  ap- 
prenticeship came  to  London,  and  studied  under  John 
Hunter,  with  whom  he  resided  as  pupil  for  two  years, 
and  formed  a  lasting  friendship  with  that  great  man. 
In  1773  he  returned  to  his  native  village,  and  commenced 
practice  as  a  surgeon  and  apothecary  with  great  success. 
Nevertheless,  he  abstracted  from  the  fatigues  of  country 
practice  sufficient  time  to  form  a  museum  of  specimens 
of  comparative  anatomy  and  natural  history.  He  was 
much  liked,  was  a  man  of  lively  and  simple  humor,  and 
loved  to  tell  his  observation  of  Nature  in  homely  verse ; 
and  in  1788  he  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society  his 
curious  paper  on  the  Cuckoo.  At  the  same  time,  he  car- 
ried to  London  a  drawing  of  the  casual  disease,  as  seen 
on  the  hands  of  the  milkers,  and  showed  it  to  Sir  Ev- 
erard  Home  and  to  others.  John  Hunter  had  alluded 
frequently  to  the  fact  in  his  lectures;  Dr.  Adams  had 
heard  of  the  Cow-pox  both  from  Hunter  and  Cline,  and 
mentions  it  in  his  Treatise  on  Poisons,  published  in 
1795,  three  years  previous  to  Jenner's  own  publication. 
Stih1  no  one  had  the  courage  or  penetration  to  prosecute 
the  inquiry  except  Jenner. 

Jenner  now  resolved  to  confine  his  practice  to  medi- 
cine, and  obtained,  in  1792,  a  degree  of  M.D.  from  the 
University  of  St.  Andrew's. 

*  The  grandfather  of  Maria  Theresa  died  of  it,  wrapped,  by  order 
of  the  faculty,  in  twenty  yards  of  scarlet  broadcloth. 

t  In  the  Russian  empire,  small-pox  is  said  to  have  swept  away  two 
millions  in  a  single  year. —  Woodvilk  on  Small-pox. 


JENNER' s  DISCOVERY.  191 

We  now  arrive  at  the  great  event  of  Jenner's  life. 
While  pursuing  his  professional  education  in  the  house 
of  his  master  at  Sudbury,  a  young  countrywoman  applied 
for  advice ;  and  the  subject  of  small-pox  being  casually 
mentioned,  she  remarked  that  she  could  not  take  the 
small-pox  because  she  had  had  cow-pox;  and  he  then 
learned  that  it  was  a  popular  notion  in  that  district  that 
milkers  who  had  been  infected  with  a  peculiar  eruption 
which  sometimes  occurred  on  the  udder  of  the  cow  were 
completely  secure  against  the  small-pox.  The  medical 
gentlemen  of  the  district  told  Jenner  that  the  security 
which  it  gave  was  not  perfect;  and  Sir  George  Baker, 
the  physician,  treated  it  as  a  popular  error.  But  Jenner 
thought  otherwise ;  and,  although  John  Hunter  and  oth- 
er eminent  surgeons  disregarded  the  subject,  Jenner  pur- 
sued it.  He  found  at  Berkeley  that  some  persons,  to 
whom  it  was  impossible  to  give  small-pox  by  inoculation, 
had  had  cow-pox,  but  that  others  who  had  had  cow-pox 
yet  received  small-pox.  This  led  to  the  doctor's  discov- 
ery that  the  cow  was  subject  to  a  certain  eruption  which 
had  the  power  of  guarding  from  small-pox ;  and,  next, 
that  it  might  be  possible  to  propagate  the  cow-pox,  and 
with  it  security  from  the  small-pox,  first  from  the  cow  to 
the  human  body,  and  thence  from  one  person  to  another. 
Here,  then,  was  an  important  discovery,  that  matter  from 
the  cow,  intentionally  inserted  into  the  body,  gave  a 
slighter  ailment  than  when  received  otherwise,  and  yet 
had  the  same  effect  of  completely  preventing  small-pox. 
But  of  what  advantage  was  it  for  mankind  that  the  cows 
of  Gloucestershire  possessed  a  matter  thus  singularly 
powerful?  How  were  persons  living  at  a  distance  to 
derive  benefit  from  this  great  discovery  ?  Dr.  Jenner, 
having  inoculated  several  persons  from  a  cow,  took  the 
matter  from  the  human  vesicles  thus  produced,  and  inoc- 
ulated others,  and  others  from  them  again,  thus  making 
it  pass  in  succession  through  many  individuals,  and  all 
with  the  same  good  effect  in  preventing  small-pox. 

An  opportunity  occurred  of  making  a  trial  of  the  lat- 
ter on  May  14th,  1796  (a  day  still  commemorated  by  the 
annual  festival  at  Berlin),  when  a  boy,  aged  eight  years, 
was  vaccinated  with  matter  from  the  hands  of  a  milk- 
maid ;  the  experiment  succeeded,  and  he  was  inoculated 


192  VACCINATION   DISCO VEKED. 

for  small-pox  on  the  1st  of  July  following  without  the 
least  effect.  Dr.  Jenner  then  extended  his  experiments, 
and  in  1798  published  his  first  memoir  on  the  subject. 
He  had  originally  intended  to  communicate  his  results  to 
the  Royal  Society,  but  was  admonished  not  to  do  so,  lest 
it  should  injure  the  character  which  he  had  previously 
acquired  among  scientific  persons  by  his  paper  on  the 
natural  history  of  the  Cuckoo.  In  the  above  work  Dr. 
Jenner  announces  the  security  against  small-pox  afforded 
by  the  true  cow-pox,  and  also  traces  the  origin  of  that 
disease  in  the  cow  to  a  similar  affection  of  the  heel  of 
the  horse. 

The  method,  however,  met  with  much  opposition,  un- 
til, in  the  following  year,  thirty-three  leading  physicians 
and  forty  eminent  surgeons  of  London  signed  an  earnest 
expression  of  their  confidence  in  the  efficacy  of  the  cow- 
pox.  The  royal  family  of  England  exerted  themselves 
to  encourage  Jenner :  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  the  Duke 
of  York,  the  king,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the  queen, 
bestowed  great  attention  upon  Jenner.  The  incalculable 
utility  of  cow-pox  was  at  last  evinced,  and  observation 
and  experience  furnished  evidence  enough  to  satisfy  the 
Baillies  and  Heberdens,  the  Monros  and  Gregorys  of 
Britain,  as  well  as  the  physicians  of  Europe,  India,  and 
America.  The  new  practice  now  began  to  supersede  the 
old  plan  pursued  by  the  Small-pox  Hospital,  which  had 
been  founded  for  inoculation.  The  two  systems  were 
each  pursued  until  1808,  when  the  Hospital  governors 
discontinued  small-pox. 

A  Committee  of  Parliament  was  now  appointed  to  con- 
sider the  claims  of  Jenner  upon  the  gratitude  of  his  coun- 
try. It  was  clearly  proved  that  he  had  converted  into 
scientific  demonstration  a  tradition  of  the  peasantry. 
Two  parliamentary  grants  of  £10,000  and  £20,000  were 
voted  to  him.  In  1808  the  National  Vaccine  Establish- 
ment was  formed  by  government,  and  placed  under  his 
direction.  Honors  were  profusely  showered  upon  him 
by  various  foreign  princes,  as  well  as  by  the  principal 
learned  bodies  of  Europe. 

Dr.  Jenner  passed  the  remainder  of  his  years  princi- 
pally at  Berkeley  and  at  Cheltenham,  continuing  to  the 
last  his  inquiries  on  the  great  object  of  his  life.  He  died 


CHARACTER    OF    JENNER.  193 

at  Berkeley  in  February,  1823,  at  the  green  old  age  of 
seventy-four :  his  remains  lie  in  the  chancel  of  the  parish 
church  of  Berkeley.  A  marble  statue  by  Sievier  has 
been  erected  to  his  memory  in  the  nave  of  Gloucester 
Cathedral ;  and  another  statue  of  him  has  been  placed  in 
a  public  building  at  Cheltenham.  Five  medals  have  been 
struck  in  honor  of  Jenner :  three  by  the  German  nation, 
one  by  the  Surgeons  of  the  British  Navy,  and  the, fifth 
by  the  London  Medical  Society. 

No  monument  of  Jenner  has  been  placed  in  Westmin- 
ster Abbey,  whose  proudest  inmates  would  be  honored 
by  such  companionship.  It  was,  however,  at  length  de- 
termined to  honor  this  good  and  great  man  by  placing 
his  statue  in  the  metropolis.  A  subscription  for  this 
purpose  was  originated  in  England,*  but  nearly  half  the 
amount  (£340)  was  collected  by  the  Philadelphia  Com- 
mittee. The  statue — which  was  inaugurated  in  Trafal- 
gar Square,  May  IT,  1858,  the  hundred  and  ninth  anni- 
versary of  Dr.  Jenner's  birth — was  modeled  by  Mr.  Cal- 
der  Marshall,  R.A.,  and  is  cast  in  bronze.  As  a  compo- 
sition it  is  successful,  the  sitting  position  and  the  reflect- 
ive attitude  being  very  characteristic  of  Jenner's  placid 
and  amiable  nature.  The  doctor  wears  his  university 
gown,  and  is  seated  in  a  classic  chair,  which  is  ornament- 
ed with  the  wand  of  JEsculapius.  The  pedestal  is  of 
gray  granite,  and  is  simply  inscribed  JENNER. 

Dr.  Jenner  was  endowed  with  a  rare  quality  of  mind, 
which  it  may  be  both  interesting  and  beneficial  to  sketch. 
A  singular  originality  of  thought  was  his  leading  char- 
acteristic. He  appeared  to  have  naturally  inherited  what 
in  others  is  the  result  of  protracted  study.  He  seemed 
to  think  from  originality  of  perception  alone,  and  not 
from  induction.  He  arrived  by  a  glance  at  inferences 
which  would  have  occupied  the  laborious  conclusions  of 
most  men.  In  human  and  animal  pathology,  in  compar- 
ative anatomy,  and  in  geology,  he  perceived  facts  and 
formed  theories  instantaneously,  and  with  a  spirit  of  in- 
ventive penetration  which  distanced  the  slower  approach- 
es of  more  learned  men.  But,  if  his  powers  of  mind  were 

*  The  German  nation  had  already  struck  three  medals  of  Jenner ; 
and  in  England,  the  prince  consort,  to  his  honor,  subscribed  liberally 
to  the  statue  fund. 

I 


194 


STATUE   OF   JENNEK. 


singularly  great,  the  qualities  which  accompanied  them 
were  still  more  felicitous.  He  possessed  the  most  singu- 
lar amenity  of  disposition  with  the  highest  feeling,  the 
rarest  simplicity  united  to  the  highest  genius.  In  the 
great  distinction  and  the  superior  society  to  which  his 
discovery  introduced  him,  the  native  cast  of  his  character 
was  unchanged.  Among  the  great  monarchs  of  Europe, 
who,  when  in  great  Britain,  solicited  his  acquaintance,  he 
was  the  unaltered  Dr.  Jenner  of  his  birthplace.  In  the 
other  moral  points  of  his  character,  affection,  friendship, 
beneficence,  and  liberality  were  pre-eminent.  In  religion, 
his  belief  was  equally  remote  from  laxity  and  fanaticism ; 
and  he  observed  to  an  intimate  friend  not  long  before  his 
death  that  he  wondered  not  that  the  people  were  un- 
grateful to  him  for  his  discovery,  but  he  was  surprised 
that  they  were  ungrateful  to  God  for  the  benefits  of 
which  he  was  the  humble  means. 


Statue  of  Dr.  Jenner,  in  Trafalgar  Square,  London. 


EULER'S  POWERS  OF  CALCULATION. 

LEONARD  EULEK,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  math- 
ematicians of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  born  at  Basle 
in  1707,  and  was  educated  in  the  University  of  that  city. 
In  1730  he  obtained  the  Professorship  of  Natural  Phi- 
losophy in  the  Academy  of  St.  Petersburg.  In  1735,  a 
very  intricate  problem  in  mathematics  having  been  pro- 
pounded by  the  Academy,  he  completed  the  solution  of 
it  in  three  days  ;  but  the  exertion  of  his  mind  had  been 
so  violent  that  it  threw  him  into  a  fever,  which  endan- 
gered his  life,  and  deprived  him  of  the  use  of  one  of  his 
eyes.  In  1741,  by  invitation  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
Euler  went  to  Berlin,  where  the  Princess  of  Anhalt,  the 
king's  niece,  received  from  him  instructions  in  the  well- 
known  facts  in  the  physical  sciences ;  and  on  his  return 
to  St.  Petersburg  in  1766,  Euler  published  his  celebrated 
work,  Letters  to  a  German  Princess,  in  which  he  dis- 
cusses with  clearness  the  most  important  truths  in  me- 
chanics, optics,  sound,  and  physical  astronomy.  This 
work  has  been  translated  into  most  of  the  languages  of 
Europe.  Euler  had  previously  published  several  isolated 
treatises  and  some  hundred  memoirs  on  mathematics. 
During  his  residence  at  Berlin  the  king  often  employed 
him  in  calculations  relative  to  the  Mint  and  other  sub- 
jects of  finance ;  in  the  conducting  of  the  waters  of  San 
Souci,  and  in  the  inspection  of  canals  and  other  public 
works.  By  invitation  from  the  Empress  Catharine,  Eu- 
ler returned  to  St.  Petersburg  to  end  his  days.  Shortly 
afterward  he  lost  the  sight  of  his  other  eye,  having  been 
for  a  considerable  time  obliged  to  perform  his  calcula- 
tions with  large  characters  traced  with  chalk  upon  a 
slate.  His  pupils  and  his  children  copied  his  calcula- 
tions, and  wrote  all  his  memoirs  from  his  dictation.  To 
one  of  his  servants,  who  was  quite  ignorant  of  mathe- 
matical knowledge,  he  dictated  his  Elements  of  Algebra, 
a  work  of  great  merit,  and  translated  into  English  and 
many  other  languages. 


196  EULER'S  BLINDNESS. 

Euler  now  acquired  the  rare  faculty  of  carrying  on  in 
his  mind  the  most  complicated  analytical  and  arithmet- 
ical calculations ;  and  his  powers  of  memory  wonderfully 
increased  even  in  his  old  age.  M.  d'Alembert,  when  he 
saw  him  at  Berlin,  was  astonished  at  some  examples  of 
Euler's  calculating  powers  which  occurred  in  their  con- 
versation. To  instruct  his  grandchildren  in  the  extrac- 
tion of  roots,  Euler  formed  a  table  of  the  first  six  powers 
of  all  numbers  from  1  to  100,  and  he  recollected  them 
with  the  utmost  accuracy.  Two  of  his  pupils  having 
computed  to  the  17th  term  a  complicated  converging 
series,  their  results  differed  one  unit  in  the  50th  chapter ; 
and  an  appeal  being  made  to  Euler,  he  went  over  the 
calculation  in  his  mind,  and  his  decision  was  found  cor- 
rect. His  principal  amusement,  after  he  had  lost  his 
sight,  was  to  make  artificial  loadstones,  and  to  give  les- 
sons in  mathematics  to  one  of  his  grandchildren  who 
evinced  a  taste  for  science. 

In  1771  a  dreadful  fire  broke  out  at  St.  Petersburg, 
and  reached  the  house  of  Euler ;  when  Peter  Grimen,  a 
native  of  Basle,  having  learned  the  danger  in  which  his 
illustrious  countryman  was  placed,  rushed  through  the 
flames  to  Euler's  apartment,  and  brought  him  away  on 
his  shoulders.  His  library  and  his  furniture  were  con- 
sumed, but  his  manuscripts  were  saved  by  the  exertions 
of  Count  Orloff. 

Euler  underwent  the  operation  of  couching,  which 
happily  restored  his  sight;  but,  either  from  the  negli- 
gence of  his  surgeon,  or  from  his  being  too  eager  to  avail 
himself  of  his  new  organs,  he  again  lost  it,  and  suffered 
much  severe  pain  from  the  relapse.  His  love  of  science, 
however,  continued  unabated.  On  September  7th,  1783, 
after  having  amused  himself  with  calculating  upon  a  slate 
the  law  of  the  ascensional  motion  of  balloons,  which  at 
that  time  occupied  the  attention  of  philosophers,  he  dined 
with  his  relation,  M'Lexell,  and  spoke  of  the  planet  Her- 
schel  (then  recently  discovered),  and  of  the  calculations 
by  which  its  orbit  was  determined.  A  short  time  after- 
ward, as  he  was  playing  with  one  of  his  grandchildren, 
his  pipe  fell  from  his  hand;  he  was  struck  with  apo- 
plexy, and  expired,  in  the  seventy-ninth  year  of  his  age. 

Euler's  knowledge  was  not  limited  to  mathematics  and 


ETILER'S  KNOWLEDGE.  197 

the  physical  sciences.  He  had  carefully  studied  anat- 
omy, and  botany,  and  he  was  deeply  versed  in  ancient 
literature.  He  could  repeat  the  ^Eneid  of  Virgil  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  he  could  even  tell  the  first 
and  last  lines  in  every  page  of  the  edition  which  he  used. 
In  one  of  his  works  there  is  a  learned  memoir  on  a  ques- 
tion in  mechanics,  of  which,  as  he  himself  informs  us,  a 
verse  of  the  ^Eneid  gave  him  the  first  idea.  He  amused 
himself  with  questions  of  pure  curiosity,  such  as  the 
knight's  move  hi  chess  so  as  to  cover  all  the  squares. 
His  various  researches  have  gone  far  toward  creating 
the  geometry  of  situation,  a  subject  still  imperfectly 
known.  The  following  is  one  of  the  questions  which 
Euler  has  generalized :  "  At  Konigsburg,  in  Prussia,  the 
river  divides  into  two  branches,  with  an  island  in  the 
middle,  connected  by  seven  bridges  with  the  adjoining 
shores :  it  was  proposed  to  determine  how  a  man  should 
travel  so  as  to  pass  over  each  bridge  once,  and  once 
only." 


ME.  GEOEGE  BIDDEE  AND  MENTAL 
CALCULATION. 

THE  boyhood  of  Mr.  Bidder  will  be  remembered  among 
the  few  records  we  possess  of  the  higher  class  of  mental 
calculators.  The  youth  has  now  matured  as  an  eminent 
engineer ;  and  in  1856  Mr.  Bidder  delivered  to  the  Insti- 
tution of  Civil  Engineers  two  addresses,  conveying  that 
process  of  reasoning,  or  action  of  the  mind,  by  which, 
when  a  boy,  he  trained  himself  in  Mental  Arithmetic, 
and  thus  laid  the  basis  of  that  professional  skill  which  he 
has  exercised  so  beneficially  in  his  great  engineering 
works. 

Mr.  Bidder  is  convinced  that  Mental  Calculation  can 
be  taught  to  children,  and  be  acquired  with  greater 
facility  and  less  irksomeness  than  ordinary  arithmetic. 
Still,  the  eminent  mental  calculators  have  been  extreme- 
ly few  during  the  last  two  centuries,  among  whom  Jed- 
ediah  Buxton  and  Zerah  Colborne  were  the  most  re- 
markable ;  but  even  their  powers  have  not  been  usefully 
employed,  in  consequence  of  their  not  having  subsequent- 
ly had  the  opportunity  of  receiving  a  mathematical  edu- 
cation. It  has  been  commonly  thought  that  Mental 
Calculation  is  an  art  naturally  ingrafted  upon  peculiarly 
constituted  minds;  it  has 'also  been  attributed  to  the 
possession  of  great  powers  of  memory ;  and  it  has  been 
generally  imagined  that  Mr.  Bidder  himself  has  been  in- 
debted to  unusual  powers  of  memory  and  a  naturally 
mathematical  turn  of  mind  for  the  celebrity  he  has  ac- 
quired. Now  Mr.  Bidder  emphatically  declares  this  not 
to  have  been  the  case ;  he  has  sought  every  opportunity 
of  comparing  himself  with  boys  and  men  w7ho  possess 
this  faculty,  and,  except  so  far  as  being  carefully  trained 
and  practiced  in  the  cultivation  and  use  of  figures,  he 
has  not  found  that  his  memory  was  more  than  ordinarily 
retentive.  In  fact,  while  at  school  and  at  college,  he  had 
some  difficulty  in  maintaining  a  decently  respectable  po- 
sition in  the  mathematical  class. 


ME.    GEOEGE   BIDDEE.  199 

Mr.  Bidder  enunciates  as  a  principle  that  there  is  not 
any  royal  or  short  road  to  Mental  Calculation.  All  the 
rules  which  he  employed  were  invented  by  him,  and  are 
only  methods  of  so  arranging  calculation  as  to  facilitate 
the  power  of  registration ;  in  fact,  he  thus  arrived  at  a 
sort  of  natural  algebra,  using  actual  numbers  in  the  place 
of  symbols. 

He  believes  that  when  he  began  to  deal  with  numbers  he  had  not 
learned  to  read,  and  certainly  long  after  that  time  lie  was  taught  the 
symbolical  numbers  from  the  face  of  a  watch.  His  earliest  recollec- 
tion is  that  of  counting  up  to  10,  then  up  to  100,  and  afterward  to 
1000 ;  then,  by  intuitive  process,  he  taught  himself  the  method  of  ab- 
breviating the  labor  of  counting — arriving,  in  fact,  at  the  natural  mul- 
tiplication of  numbers  into  each  other,  attributing  to  each  a  separate 
and  individual  value. 

In  this  manner  the  actual  value  of  every  number  up  to  1000  was 
impressed  upon  his  memory,  and  he  then  proceeded  onward,  seriatim, 
up  to  a  million.  It  was  his  practice  to  count  numbers  practically  by 
peas,  marbles,  or  shots  ;  to  compose  rectangles  of  various  values,  and, 
by  counting  them,  the  multiplication  table  was  ultimately  the  result 
of  actual  experience  and  test ;  and  thus  he  attained  an  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  numbers  multiplied  with  each  other  by  a  tangible 
process,  divested  of  that  formidable  character  under  which  it  was  gen- 
erally brought  before  the  young  student. 

In  this  way  he  learned  to  multiply  up  to  two  places  of  figures  before 
he  knew  the  symbolical  characters  of  the  figures,  or  the  meaning  of 
the  word  "multiply;"  as,  instead  of  the  term  "multiplying  27  by 
73,"  he  only  understood  the  expression  "27  times  73." 

All  the  varieties  of  numbers  up  to  a  million  being  represented  by 
six  different  designations,  or  varieties  of  numbers,  viz.,  units,  tens, 
hundreds,  thousands,  tens  of  thousands,  and  hundreds  of  thousands, 
their  permutations  were  only  eighteen  in  number.  A  boy,  therefore, 
who  knows  his  multiplication  table  up  to  10  times  10  registers  50  facts 
in  his  mind,  and  with  the  permutations  above  mentioned  has  only  to 
store  68  facts.  The  ordinary  multiplication  table  of  12  times  12  gives 
him  72  facts  to  store,  or  4  additional  facts.  The  machinery,  there- 
fore, necessary  to  enable  him  to  multiply  to  6  places  of  figures  consists 
of  4  facts  less  than  that  required  to  enable  him  to  carry  the  multipli- 
cation table  in  his  mind. 

The  application  of  this,  when  fairly  acquired,  may  be  thus  illus- 
trated ;  for  example,  multiplying  173  by  397,  the  following  process  is 
performed  mentally: 
100x397=39,700 
70  X  300=21,000=60,700 
70  x  90  .  =  6,300=67,000 


70x  7 
3x300 
3X  90 
3X  7 


.=     490=67,490 


.=     900=68,390 


..=      270=68,660 


21=68,681 

The  last  result  in  each  operation  being  alone  registered  by  the  mem- 
ory, all  previous  results  being  obliterated. 


200  ME.  GEOKGE   BIDDER 

To  show  the  aptitude  of  the  mind  by  practice,  he  will  know  at  a 
glance 

That  ..         ..        400X1T3=69,200 

And  then  ..         ..  3X1T3=     519 

The  difference  being  68,681,  as  above. 

In  Addition  and  Subtraction  the  same  principle,  as  already  explain- 
ed for  Multiplication,  is  adhered  to,  viz. ,  that  of  commencing  with  the 
left-hand  side,  or  the  large  numbers,  and  adding  successively,  keeping 
one  result  only  in  the  mind. 

Division  is,  as  in  ordinary  arithmetic,  much  more  difficult  than  Mul- 
tiplication, as  it  must  be  a  tentative  process,  and  is  only  carried  out  by 
a  series,  more  or  less,  of  guesses ;  but  no  doubt,  in  this  respect,  the 
training  arrived  at  by  Mental  Arithmetic  gives  the  power  of  guessing 
to  a  greater  extent  than  is  usually  attained,  and  affords  a  correspond- 
ing facility  in  the  process.  Supposing,  for  instance,  it  is  necessary  to 
divide  25,696  by  176,  the  following  will  be  the  process :  100  must  be 
the  first  figure  of  the  factor:  100  times  176  are  known  at  once  to  be 
17,600 ;  subtracting  that  from  25,696,  there  remains  8096.  It  is  per- 
ceived that  40  is  the  next  number  in  the  factor ;  40  times  176  =  7040 : 
there  then  remains  1056 ;  that,  it  is  immediately  perceived,  gives  a 
remaining  factor  of  6,  making  in  all  146.  Thus  only  one  result  is  re- 
tained in  the  mind  at  a  time ;  but,  as  contrasted  with  multiplication, 
it  is  necessary  to  keep  registered  in  the  mind  two  results  which  are 
always  changing,  viz.,  the  remainder  of  the  number  to  be  divided,  and 
the  numbers  of  the  factor  as  they  are  determined ;  but  if  it  is  known, 
as  in  the  present  instance,  that  176  is  the  exact  factor,  without  any 
remainder,  having  got  the  first  factor,  100,  which  is  perceived  at  a 
glance,  it  is  known  that  there  are  only  four  numbers  which,  multiplied 
by  76,  can  produce  a  result  terminating  in  96,  viz.,  21,  46,  71,  and  96, 
and  therefore  the  immediate  inference  is  that  it  must  be  46,  as  121 
must  be  too  little,  and  171  must  be  too  much,  therefore  146  must  be 
the  factor.  Thus,  the  only  facility  afforded  by  Mental  Calculation  is 
the  greater  power  of  guessing  at  every  step  toward  the  result. 

Mr.  Bidder  recommends,  as  the  true  course  in  teaching  arithmetic, 
that,  before  any  knowledge  of  figures  is  symbolically  acquired,  the 
process  of  counting  up  to  ten  should  be  mastered,  then  up  to  100,  and 
subsequently  to  1000 ;  then  the  multiplication  table,  up  to  10  times 
10,  should  be  taught  practically,  by  the  use  of  peas,  marbles,  or  shots, 
or  any  bodies  of  uniform  dimensions,  by  placing  them  in  rectangles  or 
squares. 

Having  thus  induced  the  student  to  teach  himself  the  multiplica- 
tion table,  nothing  will  be  more  easy  than  to  teach  him  to  multiply 
10  by  17,  which  will  be  10  X  10  + 10  X  7 ;  having  accomplished  this,  the 
multiplication  of  17  X  13  easily  follows,  being  10  X  17+3  X  10  +  3  X  7. 
This  being  executed,  it  only  remains  for  him  to  practice  multiplication 
up  to  two  places  of  figures.  Concurrently  with  this  should  be  taught 
the  permutations  of  100,  1000,  etc.,  into  each  other,  and  thus  will  be 
laid  the  basis  of  Mental  Calculation  for  whatever  extent,  the  individual 
student  relying  upon  his  own  resources  for  framing  his  rules  for  any 
other  branch  of  arithmetic.  In  order  to  do  this,  however,  his  mind 
must  be  stored  with  a  certain  number  of  facts,  which  must  be  com- 


ON   MENTAL   CALCULATION.  201 

pletcly  at  his  command ;  and  advantage  should  be  taken  of  the  mode 
of  giving  him  an  insight  into  natural  algebra  and  geometry.  With 
this  view,  the  training  should  be  extended ;  and  there  would  be  no 
difficulty  in  conveying  to  young  minds  the  knowledge  of  certain  lead- 
ing facts  connected  with  the  sciences  long  before  they  were  capable  of 
comprehending  the  beautiful  trains  of  reasoning  by  which  their  truths 
were  established.  There  is  no  difficulty  in  impressing  permanently  an 
appreciation  of  the  relative  proportion  of  the  diameter  to  the  circum- 
ference of  a  circle ;  of  the  beautiful  property  of  the  square  of  the 
hypothenuse  of  a  right-angled  triangle  being  equal  to  the  squares  of 
the  two  sides  containing  the  right  angle ;  or  of  the  equality  of  the 
areas  of  triangles  on  the  same  base,  contained  between  the  same  par- 
allel ;  and  many  others  which  must  occur  to  all  geometricians. 

The  same  with  respect  to  the  properties  of  several  series  of  num- 
bers ;  for  instance, 

1+3+5,  etc.,  or  1+2+3,  etc.,  or  (!)+(!  X6)+(1+3X6)+(1+6X 6),  etc. 

Mr.  Bidder  suggests  that  his  mode  of  proceeding  presents  advan- 
tages of  much  greater  importance  than  even  the  teaching  of  figures, 
namely,  the  cultivation  of  the  reasoning  powers  in  general.  He  would 
through  this  means  introduce  a  boy  to  natural  geometry  and  algebra. 
By  placing  shots  or  any  small  symmetrical  objects  on  the  circumfer- 
ence and  diameter  of  a  circle,  he  will  be  able,  by  actual  observation, 
to  satisfy  himself  of  their  relative  proportions.  He  may  simultaneous- 
ly be  taught  the  relation  of  the  area  of  the  circle  to  the  area  of  the 
square.  Advantage  may  also  be  taken  of  this  mode  to  develop  many 
other  ideas  connected  with  geometry ;  as,  for  instance,  that  all  the 
angles  subtended  from  the  same  chord  in  the  circle  are  equal.  This 
may  be  shown  by  having  a  small  angle  cut  in  pasteboard,  and  fitted 
to  every  possible  position  in  which  two  lines  can  be  drawn  within  the 
circle  upon  the  same  chord.  He  may  also  be  taught  that  the  rect- 
angles of  the  portions  of  any  two  lines  intersecting  a  circle  are  equal. 
If  the  learner  once  acquire  a  feeling  for  the  beauty  of  the  properties 
of  figures — surmising  that  he  has  any  natural  taste  for  arithmetic — 
the  discovery  of  these  facts  by  his  own  efforts  may  incite  him  to 
farther  investigations,  and  enable  him  to  trace  out  his  own  path  in 
the  science. 

"  As  nearly  as  I  can  recollect,"  says  Mr.  Bidder,  "  it 
was  at  about  the  age  of  six  years  that  I  was  first  intro- 
duced to  the  science  of  figures.  My  father  was  a  work- 
ing-man, and  my  elder  brother  pursued  the  same  calling. 
My  first  and  only  instructor  in  figures  was  that  elder 
brother;  the  instruction  he  gave  me  commenced  by 
teaching  me  to  count  up  to  10.  Having  accomplished 
this,  he  induced  me  to  go  on  to  100,  and  there  he  stopped. 
Having  acquired  a  certain  knowledge  of  numbers  by 
counting  up  to  100,  I  amused  myself  by  repeating  the 
process,  and  found  that  by  stopping  at  10,  and  repeating 
that  every  time,  I  counted  up  to  100  much  quicker  than 
12 


202  ME.  GEORGE   BIDDER 

by  going  straight  through  the  series.  I  counted  up  to 
10,  then  to  10  again =20,  3  times  10  =  30,  4  times  10  = 
40,  and  so  on.  This  ma-y  appear  to  you  a  simple  process, 
but  I  attach  the  utmost  importance  to  it,  because  it 
made  me  perfectly  familiar  with  numbers  up  to  100; 
they  became,  as  it  were,  my  friends,  and  I  knew  all  their 
relations  and  acquaintances.  You  must  bear  in  mind 
that  at  this  time  I  did  not  know  one  written  or  printed 
figure  from  another,  and  my  knowledge  of  language  was 
so  restricted  that  I  did  not  know  there  was  such  a  word 
as  c  multiply ;'  but,  having  acquired  the  power  of  count- 
ing up  to  100  by  10  and  by  5,  I  set  about,  in  my  own 
way,  to  acquire  the  multiplication  table.  This  I  arrived 
at  by  getting  peas  or  marbles,  and  at  last  I  obtained  a 
treasure  in  a  small  bag  of  shot.  I  used  to  arrange  them 
into  squares  of  8  on  each  side,  and  then,  on  counting 
them  throughout,  I  found  that  the  whole  number  amount- 
ed to  64 ;  and  that  fact,  once  established,  has  remained 
there  undisturbed  until  this  day,  and  I  dare  say  it  will 
remain  so  to  the  end  of  my  days.  It  was  in  this  way  that 
I  acquired  the  whole  multiplication  table  up  to  10  times 
10,  beyond  which  I  never  went;  it  was  all  I  required. 

"  At  the  period  referred  to  there  resided  in  a  house 
opposite  to  my  father's  an  aged  blacksmith,  a  kind  old 
man,  who,  not  having  any  children,  had  taken  a  nephew 
as  his  apprentice.  With  this  old  gentleman  I  struck  up 
an  early  acquaintance,  and  was  allowed  the  privilege  of 
running  about  his  workshop.  As  my  strength  increased, 
I  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  being  permitted  to  blow 
the  bellows  for  him;  and  on  winter  evenings  I  was 
allowed  to  perch  myself  on  his  forge-hearth,  listening  to 
his  stories.  On  one  of  these  occasions,  somebody  by 
chance  mentioned  a  sum — whether  it  was  9  times  9,  or 
what  it  was,  I  do  not  now  recollect;  but,  whatever  it 
was,  I  gave  the  answer  correctly.  This  occasioned  some 
little  astonishment ;  they  then  asked  me  other  questions, 
which  I  answered  with  equal  facility.  They  then  went 
on  to  ask  me  up  to  2  places  of  figures :  13  times  17,  for 
instance.  That  was  rather  beyond  me  at  the  time ;  but 
I  had  been  accustomed  to  reason  on  figures,  and  I  said, 
13  times  17  means  10  times  10  plus  10  times  7,  plus  10 
times  3  and  3  times  7.  I  said  10  times  10  are  100,  10 


ON   MENTAL   CALCULATION.  203 

times  7  are  70,  10  times  3  are  30,  and  3  times  7  are  21 ; 
which,  added  together,  give  the  result  221.  Of  course 
I  did  not  do  it  then  as  rapidly  as  afterward ;  but  I  gave 
the  answer  correctly,  as  was  verified  by  the  old  gentle- 
man's nephew,  who  began  chalking  it  up  to  see  if  I  was 
right.  As  a  natural  consequence,  this  increased  my  fame 
still  more,  and,  what  was  better,  it  eventually  caused 
halfpence  to  flow  into  my  pocket,  which,  I  need  not  say, 
had  the  effect  of  attaching  me  still  more  to  the  science 
of  arithmetic;  and  thus  by  degrees  I  got  on,  until  the 
multiple  arrived  at  thousands.  Then,  of  course,  my 
powers  of  numeration  had  to  be  increased,  and  it  was 
explained  to  me  that  10  hundreds  meant  1000.  Numer- 
ation beyond  that  point  is  very  simple  in  its  features : 
1000  rapidly  gets  up  to  10,000  and  20,000,  as  it  is  simply 
10  or  20  repeated  over  again,  with  thousands  at  the  end, 
instead  of  nothing.  So,  by  degrees,  I  became  familiar 
with  the  numeration  table  up  to  a  million.  From  2 
places  of  figures  I  got  to  3  places ;  then  to  4  places  of 
figures,  which  took  me  up,  of  course,  to  tens  of  millions ; 
then  I  ventured  to  5  and  6  places  of  figures,  which  I 
could  eventually  treat  with  great  facility ;  and  on  one 
occasion  I  went  through  the  task  of  multiplying  12  places 
of  figures  by  12  figures,  but  it  was  a  great  and  distress- 
ing effort."* 

*  Mr.  Bidder's  Addresses,  in  extenso,  have  been  edited  and  pub- 
lished by  Mr.  Charles  Manby,  F.R.S. 


CALCULATING  MACHINES. 

THE  employment  of  shells  and  pebbles  for  performing 
separate  arithmetical  operations  was  common  before  com- 
puters by  the  pen  had  attained  proficiency  for  that  pur- 
pose. The  Roman  Abacus  was  the  oldest  instrument  of 
this  kind :  it  was  employed  in  the  south  of  Europe  till 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  in  England  to  a  later 
period.  It  consisted  of  counters,  movable  in  parallel 
grooves,  or  on  parallel  wires  in  a  frame,  and  having  the 
different  denominations,  units,  tens,  hundreds,  etc.,  ac- 
cording to  the  grooves  in  which  they  were  placed.  In 
China,  where  the  whole  system  is  decimal,  this  instru- 
ment, called  Schwampan,  is  used  with  great  rapidity. 
From  the  merchants  of  China,  at  the  great  fair  of  Novo- 
gorod,  the  Muscovites  are  thought  to  have  first  learned 
the  utility  of  the  Abacus,  since  it  is,  at  the  present  day, 
the  common  mode  of  reckoning  in  the  shops  of  Moscow, 
the  Russian  money  being  in  decimals.  This  is  the  sim- 
plest form  of  Calculating  Machine  with  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted. 

"  Napier's  bones,"  described  at  page  140,  is  another  in- 
strument for  arithmetical  calculations ;  and  Saunderson, 
the  blind  mathematician,  invented  a  machine  by  which  he 
was  enabled  to  make  computations. 

Blaise  Pascal,  when  scarcely  nineteen  years  of  age,  de- 
vised a  machine  for  performing  arithmetical  operations ; 
its  construction,  however,  was  a  much  more  troublesome 
task  than  its  contrivance,  and  Pascal  not  only  injured  his 
constitution,  but  wasted  the  most  valuable  portion  of  his 
life  in  his  attempts  to  bring  it  to  perfection.  A  clock- 
maker  in  Rouen,  to  whom  he  had  described  his  earliest 
model,  made  one  of  his  own  accord,  which,  though  utter- 
ly unfit  for  its  purpose,  was  placed  in  the  cabinet  of  curi- 
osities at  Rouen,  and  annoyed  Pascal  so  much  that  he 
dismissed  all  the  workmen  in  his  service,  under  the  ap- 
prehension that  other  imperfect  models  might  be  made 


205 

of  the  new  machine  they  were  employed  to  construct. 
Some  time  afterward,  the  Chancellor  Seguier,  having  seen 
Pascal's  first  model,  encouraged  him  to  proceed,  and  ob- 
tained for  him,  in  May,  1649,  the  exclusive  privilege  of 
constructing  it ;  and  he  then  gave  up  all  his  time  to  the 
machine.  The  first  model  which  he  executed  proved  un- 
satisfactory both  in  its  form  and  materials.  After  suc- 
cessive improvements,  he  made  a  second,  and  then  a  third, 
which  went  by  springs,  and  was  very  simple  in  its  con- 
struction. This  machine  Pascal  actually  used  several 
times  in  the  presence  of  many  of  his  friends ;  but  defects 
gradually  presented  themselves ;  and  he  executed  more 
than  fifty  models — all  of  them  different ;  some  of  wood, 
others  of  ivory  and  ebony,  and  others  of  copper — before 
he  completed  the  machine. 

From  this  remarkable  invention  Pascal  doubtless  ex- 
pected much  more  reputation  than  posterity  has  award- 
ed. This  over-estimate  of  its  merits,  founded  on  the 
length  of  time  and  the  mental  energy  which  it  had  ex- 
hausted, is  strongly  exhibited  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote 
to  Christina,  Queen  of  Sweden,  in  1650,  accompanying 
one  of  the  machines.  The  tone  of  this  letter  is  frank  and 
manly ;  "  for,  though  only  in  his  twenty-seventh  year, 
Pascal  had  witnessed,  and  even  experienced,  the  truth, 
that  nations  who  vaunt  most  loudly  their  superiority  in 
science  and  learning  have  ever  been  the  most  guilty  in 
neglecting  and  even  starving  their  cultivators.  The 
French  monarch  had,  indeed,  given  him  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  his  invention' — the  right  of  expending  his 
time,  his  money,  and  his  health  in  perfecting  a  machine 
for  the  benefit  of  France  and  the  world  ;  but,  like  a  Brit- 
ish patent  bearing  the  Great  Seal  of  England,  it  was  not 
worth  the  wax  which  the  royal  insignia  so  needlessly 
adorned."* 

Pascal's  machine  was  an  assemblage  of  wheels  and  cyl- 
inders :  on  the  convex  surfaces  of  the  latter  were  the 
numbers  with  which  the  operations  were  to  be  perform- 
ed, and  attached  to  the  axles  of  the  cylinders  were  teeth- 
ed wheels,  which  were  turned  by  pointers,  the  additions 
being  performed  by  means  of  the  numbers  in  the  lower 
series  of  numbers  on  the  cylinders,  and  the  subtractions 
*  North  British  Review,  No.  2. 


206  ME.  BABBAGE'S  DIFFERENCE  ENGINE. 

by  the  upper  series.  This  machine  excited  a  consider- 
able sensation  throughout  Europe,  and  many  attempts 
were  made  to  improve  its  construction  and  extend  its 
power.  De  1'Epine,  Boitissendeau,  and  Grillet  in  France, 
S.  Morland*  and  Gersten  in  England,  and  Poleni  in  Italy, 
applied  to  this  task  all  their  mathematical  and  mechan- 
ical skill,  but  none  of  them  seem  to  have  devised  or  con- 
structed a  machine  superior  to  that  of  Pascal.  The  cele- 
brated Leibnitz,  however,  is  believed  to  have  made  two 
models  of  a  Calculating  Machine  which  surpassed  Pas- 
cal's both  in  ingenuity  and  power ;  but  its  complicated 
structure,  and  the  great  expense  and  labor  which  the  ac- 
tual execution  of  it  required,  discouraged  its  inventor, 
and  Leibnitz  could  not  be  prevailed  upon  to  publish  any 
detailed  account  of  its  mechanism :  perhaps  all  that  is 
known  of  it  is  that  by  wheel-work  the  operations  of  mul- 
tiplication and  division  could  be  performed  without  the 
successive  additions  or  subtractions  which  would  be  re- 
quired if  Pascal's  machine  were  used. 

The  obvious  value  of  these  machines  is  for  the  obtain- 
ing numerical  tables  with  the  positive  certainty  of  their 
being  wholly  exempt  from  errors ;  and,  without  numer- 
ical tables,  astronomers,  navigators,  engineers,  actuaries, 
and,  indeed,  laborers  in  every  department  of  science  and 
the  useful  arts,  could  have  made  but  little  progress  in 
their  several  vocations. 

The  construction  of  a  Calculating  Machine  which  truly 
deserves  that  name  was  reserved  for  our  distinguished 
countryman,  Mr.  Babbage.  While  all  previous  contriv- 
ances performed  only  particular  arithmetical  operations 
imder  a  sort  of  copartnery  between  the  man  and  the 
machine,  in  which  the  latter  played  a  very  humble  part, 
the  extraordinary  invention  of  Mr.  Babbage  actually  sub- 
stitutes mechanism  in  the  place  of  man.  A  problem  is 
given  to  the  machine,  and  it  solves  it  by  computing  a 
long  series  of  numbers  following  some  given  law.  In 
this  manner  it  calculates  astronomical,  logarithmic,  and 
navigation  tables,  as  well  as  tables  of  the  powers  and 
products  of  numbers.  It  can  integrate,  too,  innumerable 
equations  of  finite  differences ;  and,  in  addition  to  these 

*  See  the  notice  of  Morland's  Arithmetical  Machine  at  pages  157-8 
of  the  present  work. 


207 

functions,  it  does  its  work  cheaply  and  quickly ;  it  cor- 
rects whatever  errors  are  accidentally  committed,  and  it 
prints  all  its  calculations  !* 

The  earliest  allusion  to  this  grand  invention  of  the  age 
occurs  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Babbage  to  Sir  Humphrey 
Davy,  dated  July  3,  1822,  in  which  he  gives  some  account 
of  a  small  model  of  his  engine  for  calculating  differences 
(hence  Mr.  Babbage  prefers  to  call  it  a  Difference  En- 
ginef),  which  "produced  figures  at  the  rate  of  forty-four 
a  minute,  and  performed  with  rapidity  and  precision  all 
those  calculations  for  which  it  was  designed ;"  and  Sir  H. 
Davy  witnessed  and  expressed  his  admiration  of  the  per- 
formances of  this  engine.  In  the  following  year,  upon  the 
recommendation  of  a  committee  of  the  Royal  Society, 
Mr.  Babbage,  at  the  desire  of  the  government,  under- 
took to  superintend  the  construction  of  such  an  engine. 
He  gave  his  mental  labor  gratuitously :  drawings  of  the 
most  delicate  nature  were  made,  tools  were  formed  ex- 
pressly to  meet  mechanical  difficulties,  and  workmen  ed- 
ucated in  the  construction  of  the  machine.  Mr.  Babbage 
bestowed  his  whole  time  upon  the  subject  for  many  years ; 
and  about  £17,000  had  been  expended,  when  a  dispute 
arose  with  the  manager  of  the  mechanical  department, 
who  withdrew,  taking  with  him  all  the  valuable  tools  that 
had  been  used  in  the  work  (which  he  had  a  legal  right  to 
do),  and  the  works  were  suspended.  Mr.  Babbage  now 
devised,  upon  a  principle  of  an  entirely  new  kind,  an  An- 
alytical Engine  of  far  simpler  construction,  to  execute 
with  greater  rapidity  the  calculations  for  which  the  Dif- 
ference Engine  was  intended,  and  which  should  contain 
a  hundred  variables,  or  numbers  susceptible  of  changing, 
and  each  consisting  of  twenty-five  figures.  The  govern- 
ment, however,  abandoned  the  completion  of  the  work, 
and  in  1843  the  portion  of  the  Engine,  as  it  existed,  was 
placed  in  the  Museum  of  King's  College.  It  was  capa- 
ble of  calculating  to  five  figures  and  two  orders  of  differ- 
ences ;  but  it  is  now  out  of  order,  and  no  portion  of  the 
printing  machinery  exists. 

Throughout  the  long  series  of  years  which  Mr.  Bab- 
bage devoted  to  this  great  work,  he  did  not  receive  one 
shilling  for  his  invention,  his  time,  or  his  services,  while 

*  North  British  Review,  No.  2.  f  See  Frontispiece. 


208  SCHEUTZ'S   DIFFERENCE   ENGINE. 

he  declined  offers  of  great  emolument,  the  acceptance  of 
which  would  have  interfered  with  his  labors  upon  the 
Difference  Engine.  Yet,  with  unwearied  zeal,  he  has 
since  occupied  every  working  and  almost  every  waking 
houi\in  the  contrivance  and  the  construction  of  the  An- 
alytical Engine,  carrying  on  the  drawings  and  experi- 
ments for  this  new  machine  at  his  own  expense :  the 
mechanical  notations  for  the  purpose  cover  400  or  500 
large  sheets  of  paper,  the  original  sketches  extend  to 
five  volumes,  and  there  are  upward  of  100  large  draw- 
ings. The  following  is  a  summary  of  the  powers  of  the 
engine : 

It  will  perform  the  several  operations  of  simple  arithmetic  on  any 
numbers  whatever.  It  can  combine  the  quantities  algebraically  or 
arithmetically  in  an  unlimited  variety  of  relations.  It  can  use  alge- 
braic signs  according  to  their  proper  laws,  and  develop  the  conse- 
quences of  those  laws.  It  can  arbitrarily  substitute  any  formula  for 
any  others,  effacing  the  first  from  the  columns  on  which  it  is  repre- 
sented, and  making  the  second  appear  in  its  stead.  And,  lastly,  it  can 
effect  processes  of  differentiation  and  integration  on  functions  in  which 
the  operations  take  place  by  successive  steps.  It  is  farther  stated  that 
the  engine  is  particularly  fitted  for  the  operations  of  the  combinatory 
analysis  for  computing  the  numbers  of  Bernouilli,  etc. 

The  Difference  Engine  was  elaborately  described  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  July,  1834  ;  from  reading  which 
Mr.  George  Scheutz,  at  that  time  the  editor  of  a  techno- 
logical journal  in  Stockholm,  was  so  fascinated  with  the 
subject  that  he  set  about  constructing  a  machine  for  the 
same  purpose  as  that  of  Mr.  Babbage,  namely,  that  of 
calculating  and  simultaneously  printing  numerical  tables ; 
but,  after  satisfying  himself  of  the  practicability  of  the 
scheme  by  constructing  models  of  wood,  pasteboard,  and 
wire,  he  relinquished  the  design.  Three  years  after- 
ward, in  1837,  his  son,  Mr.  Edward  Scheutz,  then  a  stu- 
dent in  the  Royal  Technological  Institute  at  Stockholm, 
being  provided  with  a  work-room  in  his  father's  house, 
as  well  as  a  lathe  and  other  necessary  tools,  constructed 
a  working  model  in  metal,  and  succeeded  in  demon- 
strating the  application  of  the  scheme  to  practical  pur- 
poses. The  father  now  applied  to  the  government  for 
aid,  but  was  refused.  The  father  and  son  then  worked 
together ;  but  the  severe  economy  they  had  been  com- 
pelled to  use  in  the  purchase  of  materials  and  tools,  and 


209 

probably  the  absence  in  Sweden  of  those  precious  but 
expensive  machine-tools  which  constitute  the  power  of 
modern  workshops,  rendered  this  new  model  unsatis- 
factory in  its  operations,  although  perfectly  correct  in 
principle.  Exhausted  by  these  sacrifices,  yet  convinced 
that  with  better  workmanship  a  more  perfect  instrument 
was  within  their  reach,  Mr.  Scheutz  applied  for  assist- 
ance to  the  Diet  of  Sweden;  but  the  conditions  on 
which  they  reluctantly  consented  to  advance  5000  rix- 
dollars  (about  £280)  were  so  stringent  that  the  Messrs. 
Scheutz  were  compelled  to  renounce  the  work,  and  the 
model  remained  shut  up  in  its  case  during  the  ensuing 
seven  years. 

The  inventors  then  renewed  their  application  to  the 
Diet,  and,  by  the  assistance  of  some  members  of  the  Swed- 
ish Academy,  the  state  being  secured  from  loss,  a  limit- 
ed amount  was  raised,  and  the  Messrs.  Scheutz,  after  work- 
ing night  and  day,  completed  the  machine  before  the  end 
of  October,  1853.  The  Diet  now  granted  a  reward  of 
5000  rix-dollars  to  the  inventors,  thus  raising  their  total 
grant  to  10,000  rix-dollars  (about  £560).  The  new  en- 
gine performed  its  work  so  perfectly  as  to  require  no  al- 
teration whatever. 

The  size  of  Messrs.  Scheutz's  machine,  when  placed  on  its  proper 
stand  and  protected  by  its  cover,  is  about  that  of  a  small  square  piano- 
forte. The  calculating  portion  consists  of  a  series  of  fifteen  upright 
steel  axes,  passing  down  the  middle  of  five  horizontal  rows  of  silver- 
coated  numbering  rings,  fifteen  in  each  row,  each  ring  being  support- 
ed by  and  turning  concentrically  on  its  own  small  brass  shelf,  having 
within  it  a  hole  rather  less  than  the  largest  diameter  of  the  ring. 
Round  the  cylindrical  surface  of  each  ring  are  engraved  the  ordinary 
numerals  from  0  to  9,  one  of  which,  in  each  position  of  the  ring,  ap- 
pears in  front,  so  that  the  successive  numbers  shown  in  any  horizon- 
tal row  of  rings  may  be  read  from  left  to  right,  as  in  ordinary  writing. 

The  machine  not  only  calculates  the  series  of  numbers,  but  it  im- 
presses each  result  on  a  piece  of  lead,  from  which  a  cliche  in  type- 
metal  is  taken,  thus  producing  a  stereotype  plate  from  which  printed 
copies  may  be  obtained  free  from  any  error  of  composing,  etc.  The 
mechanism  is  peculiarly  simple.  The  machine  calculates  to  sixteen 
figures,  but  prints  to  eight  only.  By  taking  out  certain  wheels  and 
inserting  others,  the  machine  can  be  readily  caused  to  produce  its  re- 
sults in  £  s.  </.,  degrees,  minutes,  and  seconds,  or  any  other  series  of 
subdivisions  which  may  be  thought  desirable.  The  machine  performs 
its  operations,  when  once  set  to  the  law  on  which  the  required  table 
depends,  by  simply  turning  a  handle,  without  any  farther  attention, 


210  SCHEUTZ'S   DIFFEEENCE   ENGINE. 

the  power  required  for  the  purpose  being  extremely  small,  not  more 
than  a  child  of  ten  years  old  could  supply.  The  calculations  are 
made,  and  the  results  impressed  on  the  lead,  at  the  rate  of  about  250 
figures  every  ten  minutes,  the  machine  being  worked  slowly. 

In  the  winter  of  1854  the  inventors  brought  their  ma- 
chine to  London,  where  Mr.  William  Gravatt,  F.  R.  S., 
civil  engineer,  showed  and  explained  the  invention  to  the 
Royal  Society.  It  was  next  placed  in  the  Great  Exhibi- 
tion at  Paris,  where  Mr.  Gravatt  again  kindly  worked 
and  explained  the  machine  to  many  scientific  gentlemen ; 
and  a  jury  unanimously  awarded  to  it  a  gold  medal. 
"The  Emperor  Napoleon"  (says  Mr.  Babbage),  "  true  to 
the  inspirations  of  his  own  genius  and  to  the  policy  of 
his.  dynasty,  caused  the  Swedish  Engine  to  be  deposited 
in  the  Imperial  Observatory  of  Paris,  and  to  be  placed 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Members  of  the  Board  of  Longi- 
tude." 

In  1856  Mr.  E.  Scheutz  revisited  London ;  and  the  ma- 
chine was  brought  from  France,  and  was  set  to  work  in 
an  apartment  of  Mr.  Gravatt's  house.  It  was  subse- 
quently purchased  for  the  Dudley  Observatory  at  Albany, 
U.  S.,  by  Mr.  Rathbone,  a  merchant  of  that  city. 

Mr.  Babbage,  in  some  observations  which  he  gracefully 
addressed  to  the  Royal  Society  in  1856,  says: 

Mr.  Scheutz's  engine  consists  of  two  parts,  the  Calculating  and  the 
Printing ;  the  former  being  again  divided  into  two,  the  Adding  and 
the  Carrying  parts. 

With  respect  to  the  Adding,  its  structure  is  entirely  different  from 
my  own,  nor  does  it  even  resemble  any  one  of  those  in  my  drawings. 

The  very  ingenious  mechanism  for  carrying  the  tens  is  also  quite 
different  from  my  own. 

The  Printing  part  will,  on  inspection,  be  pronounced  altogether  un- 
like that  represented  in  my  drawings,  which,  it  must  also  be  remem- 
bered, were  entirely  unknown  to  Mr.  Scheutz. 

The  contrivance  by  which  the  computed  results  are  conveyed  to  the 
printing  apparatus  is  the  same  in  both  our  engines;  and  it  is  well 
known  in  the  striking  part  of  the  common  eight-day  clock,  which  is 
called  "the  snail." 

A  small  volume  of  Specimens  of  Tables  calculated, 
stereo-moulded,  and  printed  by  Machinery,  by  Messrs. 
Scheutz,  is  dedicated  to  Mr.  Babbage,  in  recognition  of 
the  generous  assistance  he  has  afforded  to  the  ingenious 
laborers  in  a  similar  field  to  that  in  which  he  has  so  long 
toiled.  The  remarkable  and  unique  feature  of  the  book 


211 

itself  is,  that  the  tables  and  calculations  are  all  printed 
from  stereotyped  plates  produced  directly  from  the  ma- 
chine, and  without  the  use  of  any  movable  type. 

One  of  Messrs.  Scheutz's  Difference  Engines,  made  by 
Messrs.  Donkin  for  the  English  government,  is  now  work- 
ed in  the  Registrar  General's  Office  in  Somerset  House. 

Several  other  varieties  of  Calculating  Machines  have 
been  produced  within  the  last  twenty  years,  but  neither 
of  them  can  be  said  to  equal  in  the  circumstances  of  its 
production  the  interest  attached  to  the  above  engines. 


"THE  STAEEY  GALILEO."    INVENTION  OF 
THE  TELESCOPE. 

THERE  is  no  instrument  or  machine  of  human  inven- 
tion (says  Sir  David  Brewster)  so  recondite  in  its  theory 
and  so  startling  in  its  results  as  the  Telescope.  All 
others  embody  ideas  and  principles  with  which  we  are 
familiar;  and,  however  complex  their  construction,  or 
vast  their  power,  or  valuable  their  products,  they  are  all 
limited  in  their  application  to  terrestrial  and  sublunary 
purposes.  The  mighty  steam-engine  has  its  germ  in  the 
simple  boiler  in  which  the  peasant  prepares  his  food. 
The  huge  ship  is  but  the  expansion  of  the  floating  leaf 
freighted  with  its  cargo  of  atmospheric  dust ;  and  the 
flying  balloon  is  but  the  infant's  soap-bubble  lightly  laden 
and  overgrown.  But  the  Telescope,  even  in  its  most 
elementary  form,  embodies  a  novel  and  gigantic  idea, 
without  an  analogue  in  nature,  and  without  a  prototype 
in  experience.  It  enables  us  to  see  what  would  forever 
be  invisible.  It  displays  to  us  the  being  and  nature  of 
bodies  which  we  can  neither  see,  nor  touch,  nor  taste, 
nor  smell.  It  exhibits  forms  and  combinations  of  matter 
whose  final  cause  reason  fails  to  discover,  and  whose 
very  existence  even  the  wildest  imagination  never  ven- 
tured to  conceive.  Like  all  other  instruments,  it  is 
applicable  to  terrestrial  purposes;  but,  unlike  them  all, 
it  has  its  noblest  application  in  the  grandest  and  the  re- 
motest works  of  creation.  The  Telescope  was  never  in- 
vented.* It  was  a  divine  gift  which  God  gave  to  man, 

*  Among  the  individual  claims  to  the  invention,  none  appears  to 
have  made  so  near  an  approach  as  our  celebrated  countryman,  Roger 
Bacon.  In  the  following  passage,  extracted  from  his  Opus  Majus,  he 
describes  the  phenomena  depending  on  the  refraction  of  light  by  lenses 
with  so  much  truth,  that  we  should  almost  feel  justified  in  ascribing 
to  him  some  share  in  the  invention  both  of  the  telescope  and  micro- 
scope : 

"Greater  things  than  these  may  be  performed  by  refracted  vision. 
For  it  is  easy  to  imderstand  by  the  canons  above  mentioned  that  the 


INVENTION    OF   THE   TELESCOPE.  213 

in  the  last  era  of  his  cycle,  to  place  before  him  and  beside 
him  new  worlds  and  systems  of  worlds — to  foreshadow 
the  future  sovereignties  of  his  vast  empire,  the  bright 
abodes  of  disembodied  spirits,  and  the  final  dwellings  of 
saints  that  have  suffered,  and  of  sages  that  have  been 
truly  wise.  With  such  evidences  of  His  power  and  such 
f  manifestations  of  His  glory,  can  we  disavow  His  embas- 
sador,  disdain  His  message,  or  disobey  His  commands  ?* 
It  was  in  the  month  of  April  or  May,  1609,  that  a 
rumor,  creeping  through  Europe  by  the  tardy  messen- 
gers of  former  days,  at  length  found  its  way  to  Venice, 
where  Galileo  was  on  a  visit  to  a  friend,  that  a  Dutch- 
man had  presented  to  Prince  Maurice  of  Nassau  an  op- 
tical instrument  which  possessed  the  singular  property 
of  causing  distant  objects  to  appear  nearer  to  the  ob- 
server. This  Dutchman  was  Hans,  or  John  Lippershey, 
who,  as  has  been  clearly  proved  by  the  late  Professor 
Moll,  of  Utrecht,  was  in  possession  of  a  telescope  made 
by  himself  so  early  as  October,  1608.  A  few  days  after- 
ward this  report  was  confirmed  in  a  letter  from  James 
Badorere,  at  Paris,  to  Galileo,  who  immediately  applied 
himself  to  the  consideration  of  the  subject.  On  the  first 
night  after  his  return  to  Padua,  he  found,  in  the  doctrines 
of  refraction,  the  principle  which  he  sought.  Having 

greatest  things  may  appear  exceeding  small,  and  the  contrary.  For 
we  can  give  such  figures  to  transparent  bodies,  and  dispose  them  in 
such  order  with  respect  to  the  eye  and  the  objects,  that  the  rays  will 
be  refracted  and  bent  toward  any  place  we  please,  so  that  we  shall  see 
the  object  near  at  hand  or  at  a  distance,  under  any  angle  we  please ; 
and  thus  from  an  incredible  distance  we  may  read  the  smallest  letters, 
and  may  number  the  smallest  particles  of  dust  and  sand,  by  reason  of 
the  greatness  of  the  angle  by  which  we  may  see  them ;  and,  on  the 
contrary,  we  may  not  be  able  to  see  the  greatest  bodies  close  to  us,  by 
reason  of  the  smallness  of  the  angle  under  which  they  appear;  for 
distance  does  not  affect  this  kind  of  vision  except  by  accident,  but  the 
magnitude  of  the  angle  does  so.  And  thus  a  boy  may  appear  to  be  a 
giant,  and  a  man  as  big  as  a  mountain,  forasmuch  as  we  may  see  the 
man  under  as  great  an  angle  as  the  mountain,  and  as  near  as  we 
please ;  and  thus  a  small  army  may  appear  a  veiy  great  one,  and 
though  very  far  off,  yet  very  near  to  us,  and  the  contrary.  Thus,  also, 
the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  may  be  made  to  descend  hither  in  appear- 
ance, and  to  be  visible  over  the  heads  of  our  enemies,  and  many 
things  of  the  like  sort,  which  persons  unacquainted  with  such  thing's 
would  refuse  to  believe." 

*  North  British  Review,  No.  3. 


214  GALILEO'S  FIRST  TELESCOPE. 

procured  two  spectacle-glasses,  both  of  which  were  plane 
on  one  side,  while  one  of  them  had  its  other  side  convex, 
and  the  other  its  second  side  concave,  he  placed  one  at 
each  end  of  a  leaden  tube  a  few  inches  long,  and,  having 
applied  his  eye  to  the  concave  glass,  he  saw  objects  pretty 
large  and  pretty  near  him.  This  little  instrument,  which 
magnified  only  three  times,  and  which  he  held  between 
his  fingers  or  laid  in  his  hand,  he  carried  to  Venice, 
where  it  excited  the  most  intense  interest.  Crowds  of 
the  principal  citizens  flocked  to  his  house  to  see  the 
magical  toy;  and  after  nearly  a  month  had  been  spent 
in  gratifying  this  epidemical  curiosity,  Galileo  was  led  to 
understand  from  Leonardo  Deodati,  the  Doge  of  Venice, 
that  the  senate  would  be  highly  gratified  by  obtaining 
possession  of  so  extraordinary  an  instrument.  Galileo 
instantly  complied  with  the  wishes  of  his  patrons,  who 
acknowledged  the  present  by  a  mandate  conferring  upon 
him  for  life  his  professorship  at  Padua,  and  raising  his 
salary  from  520  to  1000  florins. 

These  details  are  related,  upon  the  authority  of  Vivi- 
ani's  Life  of  Galileo,  by  Sir  David  Brewster,  who  un- 
hesitatingly asserts  that  a  method  of  magnifying  distant 
objects  was  known  to  Baptista  Porta  and  others;  but  it 
seems  equally  certain  that  an  instrument  for  producing 
these  effects  was  first  constructed  in  Holland,  and  from 
that  kingdom  Galileo  derived  the  knowledge  of  its  exist- 
ence. In  considering  the  contending  claims,  it  has  been 
generally  overlooked  that  a  single  convex  lens,  whose 
focal  length  exceeds  the  distance  at  which  we  examine 
minute  objects,  performs  the  part  of  a  telescope,  when 
an  eye,  placed  behind  it,  sees  distinctly  the  inverted 
image  which  it  forms.  A  lens  twenty  feet  in  focal 
length  will  in  this  manner  magnify  thirty  times ;  and  it 
was  by  the  same  principle  that  Sir  William  Herschel 
discovered  a  new  satellite  of  Saturn,  by  placing  his  eye 
behind  the  focus  of  the  mirror  of  his  forty-feet  telescope. 
The  instrument  presented  to  Prince  Maurice,  and  which 
the  Marquis  Spinola  found  in  the  shop  of  John  Lipper- 
shey,  the  spectacle-maker  of  Middleburg,  must  have  been 
an  astronomical  telescope,  consisting  of  two  convex 
lenses.  Upon  this  supposition,  it  differed  from  that 
which  Galileo  constructed,  and  the  Italian  philosopher 


GALILEO'S  FIRST  TELESCOPE.  215 

will  be  justly  entitled  to  the  credit  of  having  invented 
that  form  of  telescope  which  still  bears  his  name,  while 
we  must  accord  to  the  Dutch  optician  the  honor  of  hav- 
ing previously  invented  the  astronomical  telescope. 

The  interest  which  the  exhibition  of  the  telescope  ex- 
cited at  Venice  did  not  soon  subside ;  Sirturi  describes 
it  as  amounting  to  phrensy.  When  he  himself  had  suc- 
ceeded in  making  one  of  these  instruments,  he  ascended 
the  tower  of  St.  Mark,  where  he  might  use  it  without 
molestation.  He  was  recognized,  however,  by  a  crowd 
in  the  street ;  and  such  was  the  eagerness  of  their  curi- 
osity, that  they  took  possession  of  the  wondrous  tube, 
and  detained  the  impatient  philosopher  for  several  hours, 
till  they  had  successively  witnessed  its  effects.  Desirous 
of  obtaining  the  same  gratification  for  their  friends,  they 
endeavored  to  learn  the  name  of  the  inn  at  which  Sirturi 
lodged ;  but  he,  overhearing  their  inquiries,  quitted  Ven- 
ice early  next  morning. 

The  opticians  speedily  availed  themselves  of  this  won- 
derful invention.  Galileo's  tube,  or  the  double  eye-glass, 
or  the  cylinder,  or  the  trunk,  as  it  was  called — for  Denii- 
siano  had  not  then  given  it  the  appellation  of  Telescope — 
was  manufactured  in  great  numbers,  and  in  a  very  infe- 
rior manner.  The  instruments  were  purchased  merely  as 
philosophical  toys,  and  were  carried  by  travelers  into 
every  corner  of  Europe.  The  art  of  grinding  and  pol- 
ishing lenses  was  at  this  time  very  imperfect.  Galileo, 
and  those  whom  he  instructed,  were  alone  capable  of 
making  tolerable  instruments.  In  1634  a  good  telescope 
could  not  be  procured  in  Paris,  Venice,  or  Amsterdam ; 
and  even  in  1637  there  was  not  one  in  Holland  which 
could  show  Jupiter's  disk  well  defined. 

After  Galileo  had  completed  his  first  instrument,  which 
magnified  only  three  times,  he  executed  a  larger  and  bet- 
ter one,  with  a  power  of  about  eight.  "  At  length,"  as 
he  himself  remarks,  "  sparing  neither  labor  nor  expense," 
he  constructed  a  telescope  so  excellent  that  it  bore  a 
magnifying  power  of  more  than  thirty  times.* 

Thus  was  Galileo  equipped  for  a  survey  of  the  heavens. 
The  first  celestial  object  to  which  he  directed  his  telescope 
was  the  Moon,  which,  to  use  his  own  words,  appeared  as 
*  North  British  Revieiv,  No.  3. 


216  GALILEO'S  FIKST  SURVEY. 

near  as  if  it  had  been  distant  only  two  semidiameters  of 
the  earth.  It  displayed  to  him  her  mountain  ranges  and 
her  glens,  her  continents  and  her  highlands,  now  lying 
in  darkness,  now  brilliant  with  sunshine,  and  undergoing 
all  those  variations  of  light  and  shadow  which  the  sur- 
face of  our  own  globe  presents  to  the  Alpine  traveler  or 
to  the  aeronaut.  The  four  satellites  of  Jupiter,  illumina- 
ting their  planet,  and  suffering  eclipses  in  his  shadow  like 
our  own  moon ;  the  spots  on  the  sun's  disk,  proving  his 
rotation  round  his  axis  in  twenty-five  days ;  the  crescent 
phases  of  Venus ;  and  the  triple  form,  or  the  imperfectly 
developed  ring  of  Saturn,  were  the  other  discoveries  in 
the  solar  system  which  rewarded  the  diligence  of  Galileo. 
In  the  starry  heavens,  too,  thousands  of  new  worlds  were 
discovered  by  his  telescope ;  and  the  Pleiades  alone, 
which  to  the  unassisted  eye  exhibits  only  seven  stars, 
displayed  to  Galileo  no  fewer  than/or^/.* 

It  was  then  that,  to  his  unutterable  astonishment,  Gali- 
leo saw,  as  a  celebrated  French  astronomer  (M.  Biot)  has 
expressed  it,  "  what  no  mortal  before  that  moment  had 
seen — the  surface  of  the  moon,  like  another  earth,  ridged 
by  high  mountains  and  furrowed  by  deep  valleys ;  Yenus, 
as  well  as  it,  presenting  phases  demonstrative  of  a  spheric- 
al form ;  Jupiter  surrounded  by  four  satellites,  which 
accompanied  him  in  his  orbit ;  the  milky  way ;  the  neb- 
ulae ;  finally,  the  whole  heavens  sown  over  with  an  infi- 
nite multitude  of  stars  too  small  to  be  discerned  by  the 
naked  eye."  Milton,  who  had  seen  Galileo,  described, 
nearly  half  a  century  after  the  invention,  some  of  the 
wonders  thus  laid  open  by  the  telescope : 

"The  moon,  whose  orb 
Through  optic  glass  the  Tuscan  artist  views 
At  evening  from  the  top  of  Fesole, 
Or  in  Valdarno,  to  descry  new  lands, 
Eivers,  or  mountains,  in  her  spotty  globe." 

"  There  are  "  (says  Everett,  the  American  orator)  "  oc- 
casions in  life  in  which  a  great  mind  lives  years  of  rapt 
enjoyment  in  a  moment.  I  can  fancy  the  emotions  of 
Galileo  when,  first  raising  the  newly-constructed  tele- 
scope to  the  heavens,  he  saw  fulfilled  the  grand  prophecy 
of  Copernicus,  and  beheld  the  planet  Venus  crescent  like 
*  Martyrs  of  Science.  By  Sir  David  Brewster,  K.  H.  4th  edit.,  1858. 


BLINDNESS    OF    GALILEO.  217 

the  moon.  It  was  such  another  moment  as  that  when 
the  immortal  printers  of  Mentz  and  Strasburg  received 
the  first  copy  of  the  Bible  into  their  hands,  the  work  of 
their  divine  art ;  like  that  when  Columbus,  through  the 
gray  dawn  of  the  12th  of  October,  1492  (Copernicus,  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  was  then  a  student  at  Cracow),  be- 
held the  shores  of  San  Salvador ;  like  that  when  the  law 
of  gravitation  first  revealed  itself  to  the  intellect  of  New- 
ton ;  like  that  when  Franklin  saw  by  the  stiffening  fibres 
of  the  hempen  cord  of  his  kite  that  he  held  the  lightning 
in  his  grasp;  like  that  when  Leverrier  received  back 
from  Berlin  the  tidings  that  the  predicted  planet  was 
found." 

"  The  starry  Galileo,  with  his  woes,"  is  enshrined  among 
"  the  Martyrs  of  Science."  His  noblest  discoveries  were 
the  derision  of  his  contemporaries,  and  were  even  de- 
nounced as  crimes  which  merited  the  vengeance  of  Heav- 
en. He  was  the  victim  of  cruel  persecution,  and  spent 
some  of  his  latest  hours  within  the  walls  of  a  prison ; 
and,  though  the  Almighty  granted  him,  as  it  were,  a  new 
sight,  to  discern  unknown  worlds  in  the  obscurity  of 
space,  yet  the  eyes  which  were  allowed  to  witness  such 
wonders  were  themselves  doomed  to  be  closed  in  dark- 
ness. Sir  David  Brewster  eloquently  says : 

"  The  discovery  of  the  moon's  Libration  was  the  result 
of  the  last  telescopic  observations  of  Galileo.  Although 
his  right  eye  had  for  some  years  lost  its  power,  yet  his 
general  vision  was  sufficiently  perfect  to  enable  him  to 
carry  on  his  usual  researches.  In  1636,  however,  this 
affection  of  his  eye  became  more  serious,  and  in  1637  his 
left  eye  was  attacked  with  the  same  disease :  the  disease 
turned  out  to  be  in  the  cornea,  and  every  attempt  to  re- 
store its  transparency  was  fruitless.  In  a  few  months 
the  white  cloud  covered  the  whole  aperture  of  the  pupil, 
and  Galileo  became  totally  blind.  This  sudden  and  un- 
expected calamity  had  almost  overwhelmed  Galileo  and 
his  friends.  In  writing  to  a  correspondent,  he  exclaims : 
'  Alas !  your  dear  friend  and  servant  has  become  totally 
and  irreparably  blind.  Those  heavens,  this  earth,  this 
universe,  which  by  wonderful  observation  I  had  enlarged 
a  thousand  times  beyond  the  belief  of  past  ages,  are 
henceforth  shrunk  into  the  narrow  space  which  I  myself 

K 


218  BLINDNESS    OF    GALILEO. 

occupy.  So  it  pleases  God ;  it  shall,  therefore,  please  me 
also.'  Galileo's  friend,  Father  Castelli,  deplores  the  ca-' 
lamity  in  the  same  tone  of  pathetic  sublimity:  'The 
noblest  eye,'  says  he,  '  which  nature  ever  made,  is  darken- 
ed; an  eye  so  privileged,  and  gifted  with  such  rare 
powers,  that  it  may  truly  be  said  to  have  seen  more  than 
the  eyes  of  all  that  are  gone,  and  to  have  opened  the 
eyes  of  all  that  are  to  come.'  "* 

*  Martyrs  of  Science,  4th  edit.,  1858. 


ISAAC  NEWTON  MAKES  THE  FIRST 
REFLECTING  TELESCOPE. 

ACCORDING  to  Newton's  own  confession,  he  was  ex- 
tremely inattentive  to  his  studies  while  in  the  public 
school  at  Grantham ;  and  Sir  David  Brewster,  with  the 
sympathy  of  a  fond  biographer,  attributes  this  idleness 
to  the  occupation  of  the  mind  of  the  future  philosopher 
with  subjects  in  which  he  felt  a  deeper  interest.  He  had 
not  been  long  at  school  before  he  exhibited  a  taste  for 
mechanical  inventions.  With  the  aid  of  little  saws,  ham- 
mers, hatchets,  and  tools  of  all  sorts,  he  was  occupied 
during  his  play-hours  in  constructing  models  of  known 
machines  and  amusing  contrivances.  Thus  he  modeled 
a  wind-mill  from  a  mill,  which  he  watched  in  course  of 
construction,  near  Grantham.  Dr.  Stukeley  describes  this 
working  model  to  have  been  "as  clean  and  curious  a 
piece  of  workmanship  as  the  original."  Newton  .next 
constructed  a  water-clock :  it  had  a  dial-plate  at  top,  with 
figures  of  the  hours ;  the  index  was  turned  by  a  piece  of 
wood,  which  either  fell  or  rose  by  water  dropping.  He 
also  invented  a  mechanical  carriage,  a  four-wheeled  chair, 
which  was  moved  by  the  handle  or  winch  wrought  by 
the  person  who  sat  in  it.  He  also  made  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  his  school-fellows  paper  kites  and  lanterns  of 
crimpled  paper.  At  home  he  drove  wooden  pegs  into 
the  walls  and  roofs  of  the  buildings,  as  gnomons  to  mark 
by  their  shadows  the  hours  and  half  hours  of  the  day ; 
and  he  carved  two  dials  in  stone  upon  the  walls  of  Us 
house  at  Woolsthorpe.* 

Several  years  after,  when  Newton  had  entered  T^  .nity 
College,  Cambridge,  we  find  in  one  of  his  commonplace 
books  an  entry,  dated  January,  1663-4,  "  on  the  'grind- 
ing of  spherical  optic  glasses' — on  the  errors  of  lenses, 
and  the  method  of  rectifying  them,"  etc.,  to  which  New- 
ton soon  applied  himself.  Descartes  had  invented  and 
described  machines  for  grinding  and  polishing  lenses 
*  See  Schooldays  of  Eminent  Men,  1858. 


220 

with  accuracy,  upon  which  the  perfection  of  refracting 
telescopes  and  microscopes  depended.  Newton,  how- 
ever, by  the  first  experiments  which  he  made  with  a 
prism,  found  that  the  perfection  of  telescopes  was  limited 
not  so  much  for  want  of  glasses  truly  figured,  as  because 
light  itself  is  a  heterogeneous  mixture  of  differently  refran- 
gible rays,  so  that  an  exactly  figured  glass  could  not  col- 
lect all  sorts  of  rays  into  one  point. 

This  new  branch  of  science  now  occupied  much  of 
Newton's  attention ;  and  among  the  articles  which  he 
purchased  on  his  visit  to  London  early  in  1669  were 
lenses,  two  furnaces,  and  several  chemicals.  Toward  the 
end  of  1668,  thinking  it  best  to  proceed  by  degrees,  he 
first  "  made  a  small  perspective,  to  try  whether  his  con- 
jecture would  hold  good  or  not."  The  telescope  was 
six  inches  long.  The  aperture  of  the  large  speculum 
was  something  more  than  an  inch ;  and  as  the  eye-glass 
was  a  plano-convex  lens,  with  a  focal  length  of  one  sixth 
or  one  seventh  of  an  inch,  "it  magnified  about  forty 
times  in  diameter,"  which  he  believed  was  more  than 
any  six-feet  refracting  telescope  could  do  with  distinct- 
ness. It  did  not,  however,  through  the  bad  materials 
and  the  want  of  a  good  polish,  represent  objects  so  dis- 
tinctly as  a  good  six-feet  refractor ;  yet  Sir  Isaac  saw 
with  it  Jupiter,  and  also  the  horns  or  "  moon-like  phase 
of  Venus."  He  therefore  considered  this  small  telescope 
as  an  "  epitome"  of  what  might  be  done  by  reflections ; 
and  he  did  not  doubt  that  in  time  a  six-feet  reflector 
might  be  made  which  would  perform  as  much  as  any  60 
or  100-feet  refractor. 

Newton  did  not,  however,  resume  the  construction  of 
reflectors  till  the  autumn  of  1671,  when,  finding  that 
grinding  and  polishing  the  lenses  produced  very  little 
change  in  the  indistinctness  of  the  image,  he  discovered 
that  the  defect  arose  from  the  different  refrangibility  of 
the  rays  of  light.  He  took  the  glass  prism  which  he  had 
purchased  at  Stourbridge  fair,  and  having  made  a  hole 
in  the  window-shutter  of  his  darkened  room,  he  admit- 
ted through  the  prism  a  ray  of  the  sun's  light,  which, 
after  refraction,  exhibited  on  the  opposite  wall  the  Solar 
or  Prismatic  Spectrum,  and  by  a  laborious  investigation 
proved  the  different  refrangibility  of  the  rays  of  light  to 
be  the  real  cause  of  the  imperfection  of  refracting  tele- 


THE    FIRST    REFLECTING   TELESCOPE. 


221 


scopes,  which  he  proposed  to  remedy  by  a  metallic  spec- 
ulum within  the  tube,  by  which  the  rays  proceeding  from 
the  object  are  reflected  to  the  eye.  Newton  according- 
ly set  about  executing  another  reflecting  telescope  with 
his  own  hands.  This  consisted  of  a  concave  metallic 
speculum,  the  rays  reflected  by  which  were  received 
uponxa  plane  metallic  speculum  inclined  45°  to  the  axis 
of  the  tube,  so  as  to  reflect  them  to  the  side  of  the  tube, 
in  which  there  was  an  aperture  to  receive  a  small  tube 
with  a  plano-convex  glass,  by  means  of  which  the  image 
formed  by  the  speculum  was  magnified  thirty-eight 
times ;  "  whereas  an  ordinary  telescope  of  about  two 
feet  long  only  magnified  thirteen  or  fourteen  times." 

At  the  request  of  some  of  the  members  of  the  Royal 
Society,  Newton  sent  this  telescope  for  inspection,  and 
subsequently  presented  it  to  that  distinguished  body. 
It  was  also  shown  to  King  Charles  II.  This  instrument 
is  carefully  preserved  in  the  library  of  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety at  Burlington  House,  Piccadilly,  with  the  inscription 


;  •  THE  FIRST  REFLECTING  TELESCOPE,  INVENTED  BY  SIR  ISAAC 
NEWTON,  AND  MADE  WITH  HIS  OWN  HANDS." 


222  STATUE    OF   NEWTON. 

Such  was  the  first  Reflecting  Telescope  that  was  suc- 
cessfully constructed  and  applied  to  the  heavens  ;  though 
Sir  David  Brewster  describes  it  as  a  small  and  ill-made 
instrument,  incapable  of  showing  the  beautiful  celestial 
phenomena  which  had  been  long  seen  by  refracting  tele- 
scopes; and  more  than  fifty  years  elapsed  before  tele- 
scopes of  the  Newtonian  form  became  useful  in  astron- 
omy. 

Nevertheless,  this  "  is  the  instrument  which,  under  the 
hands  of  Herschel  and  Rosse,  has  grown  to  proportions 
so  gigantic  as  to  require  the  aid  of  vast  machinery  to 
elevate  and  depress  the  tube.  Newton's  first  telescope 
is  nine  inches  long,  Lord  Rosse's  six-feet  reflector  is  sixty 
feet  in  length  !"* 

At  Grantham,  in  Lincoln  shire,  nigh  to  the  hamlet 
wherein  Newton  was  born,  was  reared  in  1858  a  statue 
of  this  "greatest  genius  of  the  human  race."  This  was 
131  years  from  the  date  of  Newton's  death,  and  verified 
the  homely  proverb  that  a  prophet  is  honored  every 
where  save  in  his  own  country  and  among  his  own  people. 
The  statue  is  of  bronze,  and  is  nearly  13  feet  high ;  and 
the  sculptor,  Mr.  Theed,  has  copied  the  likeness  of  Sir 
Isaac  from  a  mask  of  his  face  taken  after  death,  and  from 
the  portrait-bust  by  Roubiliac.  The  statue  was  inaugu- 
rated September  21,  when  Lord  Brougham  (one  of  the 
editors  of  Newton's  works)  delivered  the  address. 

In  conclusion,  his  lordship  said :  Let  it  not  he  imagined  that  the 
feelings  of  wonder  excited  by  contemplating  the  achievements  of  this 
great  man  are  in  any  degree  whatever  the  result  of  national  partial- 
ity, and  confined  to  the  country  which  glories  in  having  given  him 
birth.  The  language  which  expresses  her  veneration  is  equaled,  per- 
haps exceeded,  by  that  in  which  other  nations  give  utterance  to  theirs ; 
not  merely  by  the  general  voice,  but  by  the  well-considered  and  well- 
informed  judgment  of  the  masters  of  science.  Leibnitz,  when  asked 
at  the  royal  table  in  Berlin  his  opinion  of  Newton,  said  that,  "taking 
mathematicians  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the  time  when 
Newton  lived,  what  he  had  done  was  much  the  better  half."  "  The 
Principia  will  ever  remain  a  monument  of  the  profound  genius  which 
revealed  to  us  the  greatest  law  of  the  universe, "  are  the  words  of  La- 
place. "That  work  stands  pre-eminent  above  all  the  other  produc- 
tions of  the  human  mind."  "  The  discovery  of  that  simple  and  gen- 
eral law,  by  the  greatness  and  the  variety  of  the  objects  which  it  em- 

*  Weld's  Hist.  Royal  Society,  vol.  i. 


223 


Statue  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  at  Grantham. 

braces,  confers  honor  upon  the  intellect  of  man."  Lagrange,  we  are 
told  by  D'Alembert,  was  wont  to  describe  Newton  as  the  greatest  gen- 
ius that  ever  existed ;  but  to  add  how  fortunate  he  was  also,  "  be- 
cause there  can  only  once  be  found  a  system  of  the  universe  to  estab- 
lish." "Never,"  says  the  father  of  the  Institute  of  France — one  fill- 
ing a  high  place  among  the  most  eminent  of  its  members — "never," 
says  M.  Biot,  "  was  the  supremacy  of  intellect  so  justly  established  and 
so  fully  confessed :  in  mathematical  and  in  experimental  science  with- 
out an  equal  and  without  an  example,  combining  the  genius  for  both 
in  its  highest  degree."  The  Prindpia  he  terms  the  greatest  work  ever 
produced  by  the  mind  of  man ;  adding,  in  the  words  of  Halley,  "  that 
a  nearer  approach  to  the  Divine  nature  has  not  been  permitted  to  mor- 
tals." "In  first  giving  to  the  world  Newton's  method  of  fluxions," 
says  Fontenelle,  "Leibnitz  did  like  Prometheus — he  stole  fire  from 
heaven  to  bestow  it  upon  men."  "Does  Newton,"  L'Hopital  asked, 


224  NEWTON'S  "PRINCIPIA." 

"  sleep  and  wake  like  other  men  ?     I  figure  him  to  myself  as  a  celes- 
tial genius,  entirely  disengaged  from  matter."* 

*  "The  great  discovery  which  characterizes  the  Prindpia  is  that 
of  the  principle  of  universal  gravitation — that  every  particle  of  matter 
in  the  universe  is  attracted  by,  or  gravitates  to,  every  other  particle  of 
matter,  with  a  force  inversely  proportional  to  the  square  of  their  dis- 
tance. .  .  .  The  most  complete  and  successful  attempt  to  make  the 
Prindpia  accessible  to  those  who  are  '  little  skilled  in  mathematical 
science,'  has  been  made  by  Lord  Brougham  in  his  admirable  analysis 
of  that  work,  which  forms  the  greater  part  of  the  second  volume  of' his 
edition  of  Paley's  Natural  Theology." — SIR  D.  BREWSTER'S  Life  of 
Newton. 


GUnSTAND'S  GLASS  FOR  ACHROMATIC 
TELESCOPES. 

THE  refracting  telescope,  whose  inventor  we  can  not 
confidently  name,  was  a  small  and  useless  toy  till  Galileo 
turned  it  to  the  heavens ;  and  though,  in  the  hands  of 
Huyghens  and  Hevelius,  it  added  new  satellites  to  our 
system,  and  displayed  new  forms  and  structures  in  the 
primary  planets,  yet  it  was  only  when  made  achromatic, 
through  the  labors  of  Hall,  Dollond,  Frauenhofer,  and 
others,  that  it  became  an  essential  instrument  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  astronomy.  The  reflecting  telescope  pre- 
sents to  us  the  same  peculiarity.  We  do  not  know  the 
inventor.  Even  in  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  hands,  and  as 
constructed  and  applied  by  himself,  it  effected  no  dis- 
coveries in  the  heavens. 

The  difficulty  of  procuring  flint-glass  free  from  flaws 
and  imperfections  long  checked  the  improvement  of  the 
Achromatic  Telescope.  All  convex  lenses  of  glass,  with 
spherical  surfaces,  as  the  reader  may  be  aware,  form 
images  of  objects  in  their  focus  behind  the  lens ;  but, 
owing  to  the  spherical  and  chromatic  aberrations,  a  mass 
of  images  of  different  colors,  and  not  coincident  with 
each  other,  is  the  result.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  pronounced 
these  imperfections  to  be  incurable;  but  Mr.  Chester 
More  Hall,  a  gentleman  of  Essex,  so  early  as  1733,  in  im- 
itation of  the  organ  of  sight,  combined  media  of  different 
refractive  powers,  and  constructed  object-glasses  of  flint 
and  crown  glass,  which  corrected  the  chromatic  and  di- 
minished the  spherical  aberration.  The  telescopes  thus 
made  (which  Dr.  Bliss  named  achromatic,  i.  e.,  destitute 
of  color)  were  neither  exhibited  nor  sold,  nor  was  any' 
account  of  their  construction  made  known  to  the  world. 
In  a  trial  at  Westminster  about  the  patent  for  making 
achromatic  telescopes,  Mr.  Hall  was  allowed  to  be  the 
inventor ;  but  Lord  Mansfield  observed  that  "  it  was  not 
the  person  who  locked  his  invention  in  his  escritoire  that 

K2 


22 G  FARADAY'S  GLASS-MAKING. 

ought  to  profit  from  such  invention,  but  he  who  brought 
it  forth  for  the  benefit  of  the  public." 

In  1758,  however,  John  Dollond  arrived  at  the  same 
result :  he  reinvented  the  achromatic  telescope,  manufac- 
tured the  instrument  for  sale,  and  for  more  than  half  a 
century  supplied  all  Europe  with  this  invaluable  instru- 
ment.* 

The  monopoly  of  these  telescopes,  however,  soon  passed 
into  foreign  states.  The  manufacture  of  flint-glass  had 
been  so  severely  taxed  by  the  British  government — as 
though  to  put  down  the  achromatic  telescope  by  statute — 
that  if  a  philosopher  melted  a  pound  of  glass  fifty  times, 
he  had  to  pay  the  duty  upon  fifty  pounds.  When  the 
government  understood  their  ignorance  of  British  inter- 
ests, a  committee  of  the  Royal  Society  was  permitted  to 
erect  an  experimental  glass-house,  and  to  enjoy  the  priv- 
ilege of  compounding  a  pot  of  glass  without  the  pres- 
ence and  supervision  of  an  exciseman !  The  experi- 
mental furnace  was  erected  at  Green  and  Pellatt's  Falcon 
Glass-house,  and  subsequently  a  room  and  furnaces  were 
built  at  the  Royal  Institution ;  Dr.  Faraday  superintended 
the  chemical  part  of  the  inquiry,  and  by  the  year  1830 
the  committee  had  manufactured  glass  of  a  superior 
quality  for  optical  purposes.  Nevertheless,  Dr.  Faraday 
considered  the  results  as  negative,  and  the  manufacture 
was  laid  aside. 

The  monopoly  of  the  Achromatic  Telescope  was  thus 
lost.  What  a  conclave  of  English  legislators  and  phi- 
losophers attempted  in  vain,  was,  however,  accomplished 
by  a  humble  peasant  in  the  gorges  of  the  Jura,  where  no 
patron  encouraged  and  no  exciseman  disturbed  him.  M. 
Guinand,  a  maker  of  clock-cases  in  the  village  of  Brenetz, 
in  the  canton  of  Neufchatel,  had  been  obliged  by  defect- 
ive vision  to  grind  spectacle-glasses  for  his  own  use. 
Thus  practically  versed  in  the  optics  of  lenses,  he  amused 
himself  with  making  small  refracting  telescopes,  which 

*  John  Dollond  was  born  at  Spitalfields,  in  London,  in  the  year 
1706.  He  was  descended  from  French  ancestors,  who  were  compelled 
to  quit  Normandy  upon  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes  by  Louis 
XIV.  In  early  life  he  worked  at  the  loom,  but  in  1752  he  joined  his 
son  as  an  optician.  He  died  in  1761,  having  been  struck  with  apo- 
plexy while  engaged  in  an  intense  study  of  Clairaut's  Theory  of  the 
Moon. 


GUINAND'S  GLASS.  227 

he  mounted  in  pasteboard  tubes.  Meanwhile  an  achro- 
matic telescope  of  English  manufacture  had  come  into 
the  possession  of  Guinand's  master,  Jacquet  Droz.  He 
was  permitted  to  examine  it,  to  separate  its  lenses,  and 
to  measure  its  curves  ;  and,  after  studying  its  properties, 
he  resolved  to  attempt  to  imitate  the  wondrous  combi- 
nation. Flint-glass  was  only  to  be  had  in  England ;  and 
he  and  his  friend,  M.  Riondon,  who  went  to  that  country 
to  take  out  a  patent  for  his  self-winding  watches,  pur- 
chased as  much  glass  as  enabled  Guinand  to  supply 
several  achromatic  telescopes.  The  glass,  however,  was 
bad ;  and  the  clock-case  maker,  seeing  no  way  of  getting 
it  of  a  better  quality,  resolved  upon  making  flint-glass 
for  his  own  use.  Studying  the  chemistry  of  fusion,  he 
made  daily  experiments  in  his  blast  furnace,  between 
1784  and  1790,  with  meltings  of  three  or  four  pounds 
each,  and  carefully  noted  down  the  circumstances  and 
the  results  of  each  experiment.  He  succeeded,  and 
abandoning  his  business  for  the  more  lucrative  one  of 
making  bells  for  repeaters,  he  obtained  more  means  and 
leisure.  He  purchased  a  piece  of  ground  on  the  banks 
of  the  Doubs,  where  he  constructed  a  furnace  capable  of 
fusing  two  hundred  weight  of  glass.  The  failure  of  his 
crucibles,  the  bursting  of  his  furnaces,  and  a  thousand 
untoward  accidents,  which  would  have  disconcerted  less 
ardent  minds,  served  only  to  invigorate  the  unlettered 
peasant.  The  threads,  and  specks,  and  globules,  which 
destroyed  the  homogeneity  of  his  glass,  were  the  sub- 
jects of  his  constant  study;  and  he  at  last  succeeded  in 
obtaining  considerable  pieces  of  uniform  transparency 
and  refractive  powers,  sometimes  twelve^  and  in  one  case 
eighteen  inches  in  diameter.  He  at  last  acquired  the  art 
of  soldering  two  or  more  pieces  of  good  glass ;  and, 
though  the  line  of  junction  was  often  marked  with  glob- 
ules of  air  or  particles  of  sand,  yet  by  grinding  out  these 
imperfections  on  an  emeried  wheel,  and  by  replacing  the 
mass  in  a  furnace,  so  that  the  vitreous  matter  might  ex- 
pand and  fill  up  the  excavations,  he  succeeded  in  effacing 
every  trace  of  junction,  and  was  consequently  able  to 
produce  with  certainty  the  finest  disks  of  flint-glass. 

Frauenhofer,  the  Bavarian  optician,  having  heard  of 
Guinand's  success  in  the  manufacture  of  flint-glass,  re- 


228  GUINAND'S  SECRET. 

paired  to  Brenetz  in  1804,  and  induced  the  Swiss  artisan 
to  settle  at  Munich,  where,  from  1805  to  1814,  he  prac- 
ticed his  art,  and  taught  it  to  his  employer.  Frauenhofer 
was  an  apt  and  willing  scholar,  and,  possessing  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  chemistry  and  physics,  he  speedily  learned 
the  processes  of  his  teacher,  and  discovered  the  theory 
of  manipulation,  of  which  Guinand  knew  only  the  results. 
Thus  supplied  with  the  finest  materials  of  his  art,  he 
studied  their  refractive  and  dispersive  powers;  and  by 
his  grand  discovery  of  the  fixed  lines  in  the  spectrum, 
he  arrived  at  methods  of  constructing  achromatic  tele- 
scopes which  no  other  artist  had  possessed.  In  these 
laborious  researches  he  was  patronized  by  Maximilian 
Joseph,  King  of  Bavaria ;  and,  had  he  not  been  carried 
off  by  an  insidious  disease  in  the  prime  of  life,  he  would 
have  astonished  Europe  with  the  production  of  an  achro- 
matic object-glass  eighteen  inches  in  diameter. 

Guinand  remained  at  Munich  until  1814,  when  he  re- 
turned to  his  native  village,  where,  in  1820,  he  was  visit- 
ed by  M.  Lerebours,  a  celebrated  optician  of  Paris,  who 
had  heard  of  the  success  of  his  processes.  Lerebours 
purchased  all  his  glass,  and  left  orders  for  more ;  and  M. 
Cauchoix,  another  skillful  Parisian  artist,  procured  from 
him  large  disks  of  glass.  In  this  manner  refracting  tele- 
scopes came  to  be  constructed  in  France  rivaling  the 
most  finished  productions  of  the  Munich  artist;  and  En- 
gland, which  was  long  the  exclusive  seat  of  the  manu- 
facture of  achromatic  telescopes,  had  the  mortification  of 
finally  seeing  both  Germany  and  France  completely  out- 
strip her  in  this  branch  of  practical  optics.  This  she 
owed  to  the  shortsighted  policy  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, which  had  placed  an  exorbitant  duty  on  the  manu- 
facture of  flint-glass.  This  vexatious  fiscal  interference 
has,  however,  been  repealed,  and  the  enterprise  with 
which  makers  and  opticians  have  taken  up  the  construc- 
tion of  large  object-glasses  has  led  to  important  results. 

Mr.  Apsley  Pellatt,  in  his  Curiosities  of  Glass-making, 
a  work  of  sound  practical  value  as  well  as  popular  inter- 
est, says:  "The  secret  of  Guinand' s  success  is  considered 
not  to  have  been  in  the  novelty  of  the  materials  or  pro- 
portions, but  in  agitating  the  liquid  glass  while  at  the 
highest  point  of  fusion ;  then  cooling  down  the  entire 


GUINAND'S  SECRET.  229 

contents  of  the  pot  in  a  mass,  and,  when  annealed  and 
cool,  by  cleavage  separating  unstriated  portions,  after- 
ward softening  into  clay  moulds.  Guinand  left  two  sons, 
one  of  whom  subsequently  operated  in  conjunction  with 
M.  Bontemps,  a  scientific  French  glass-maker,  who  suc- 
ceeded in  making  good  flint  optical  glass  on  the  principle 
of  mechanical  agitation."* 

In  1848,  Bontemps,  after  attaining  high  eminence  in 
his  art,  was  induced  to  retire  from  France,  and  to  co- 
operate with  Messrs.  Chance,  Brothers,  and  Co.,  of  Bir- 
mingham, in  improving  the  quality  of  their  manufactures. 
They  conjointly  succeeded  in  producing  a  disk  in  flint  of 
29  inches  in  diameter,  weighing  2  cwt.,  and  which,  being 
submitted  to  the  operation  of  grinding,  finishing,  and 
other  processes,  in  order  to  prove  its  quality,  received  a 
Council  Medal  at  the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851.  When 
we  recollect  that  a  glass,  exceeding  only  the  small  diam- 
eter of  six  inches,  undergoes  the  annealing  process  with 
difficulty,  and  is  liable  to  cool  at  the  surface  more 
especially  than  in  the  interior,  and  that  this  tendency 
increases  with  the  size,  we  must  regard  this  production 
of  a  disk  of  29  inches  as  a  very  remarkable  work. 

*  The  widow  of  Guinand,  and  her  other  son,  set  up  works  in  Switz- 
erland upon  the  father's  principles;  they  were  succeeded  by  M. 
Dagnet,  of  Soleure,  who  sent  to  the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851  some 
of  his  products,  but  only  of  moderate  size. 


SIR  WILLIAM  HERSCHEL  AND  HIS  TELE- 
SCOPES. 

THE  long  interval  of  half  a  century  seems  to  be  the 
period  of  hybernation  during  which  the  telescopic  mind 
rests  from  its  labors  in  order  to  acquire  strength  for  some 
great  achievement.  Fifty  years  elapsed  between  the 
dwarf  Telescope  of  Newton  and  the  large  instrument  of 
Hadley ;  other  fifty  years  rolled  on  before  Sir  William 
Herschel  constructed  his  magnificent  Telescope ;  and  fifty 
years  more  passed  away  before  the  Earl  of  Rosse  pro- 
duced that  colossal  instrument  which  has  already  achieved 
such  brilliant  discoveries.* 

We  have  just  described  the  construction  of  Newton's 
dwarf  Telescope ;  fifty  years  after  which,  John  Hadley, 
the  inventor  of  the  Reflecting  Quadrant  which  bears  his 
name,  began  his  experiments,  and,  probably  after  many 
failures,  completed  a  telescope  in  1720.  It  was  present- 
ed to  the  Royal  Society  (of  which  Hadley  was  a  Fellow), 
as  thus  recorded  in  the  Journal  for  January  12, 1721 : 

Mr.  Hadley  was  pleased  to  show  the  Royal  Society  his  Reflecting 
Telescope,  made  according  to  our  President's  (Sir  Isaac  Newton)  di- 
rections in  his  Optics,  but  curiously  executed  by  his  own  hand,  the 
force  of  which  was  to  enlarge  an  object  near  two  hundred  times,  though 
the  length  thereof  exceeds  six" feet ;  and  having  shown  it,  he  made  a 
present  thereof  to  the  society,  who  ordered  their  hearty  thanks  to  bo 
recorded  for  so  valuable  a  gift. 

This  instrument  consisted  of  a  metallic  speculum  about 
six  inches  in  diameter,  and  its  focal  length  w^as  5  feet  2^ 
inches.  Its  plane  speculum  was  made  of  the  same  metal, 
about  the  15th  of  an  inch  thick;  and  it  had  six  eye- 
pieces, three  convex  lenses,  l-3d,  3-10ths,  and  ll-40ths  of 
an  inch,  magnifying  190,  208,  and  220  times  ;  and  an 
erecting  eye -piece  of  three  convex  lenses,  magnifying 
about  125  times.  It  had  also  a  small  refracting  telescope 
as  a  finder,  which  we  believe  was  first  suggested  by  Des- 
*  Sir  David  Brewster's  Life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  vol.  ii. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HEKSCHEL.  231 

cartes,  and  the  whole  was  mounted  upon  a  stand  ingen- 
iously and  elegantly  constructed.  The  celebrated  Mr. 
Bradley,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Pound,  of  Wanstead,  com- 
pared it  with  the  great  Huyghenian  refractor,  123  feet 
long,  and,  though  less  brightly,  they  saw  with  the  reflect- 
or whatever  they  had  hitherto  discovered  with  the  Huy- 
ghenian, together  with  the  belts  of  Saturn,  and  the  first 
and  second  satellites  of  Jupiter  as  bright  spots  on  the 
body  of  the  planet. 

After  executing  another  Newtonian  telescope  of  the 
same _size,  Mr.  Hadley  made  great  improvements  in  those 
of  the  Gregorian  form.  He  was  now  Vice-president  of 
the  Royal  Society,  and  set  about  enabling  astronomers 
and  opticians  to  manufacture  these  valuable  -instruments. 
Mr.  Hawksbee  first  made  them  for  public  sale ;  others 
did  the  same.  The  opticians,  with  the  aid  of  Molyneaux 
and  Hadley,  succeeded  in  the  new  art  of  grinding  and 
polishing  specula.  Scottish  makers  followed ;  and,  says 
Sir  David  Brewster,  "  in  this  way  the  Reflecting  Tele- 
scope came  into  general  use,  and,  principally  in  the  Gre- 
gorian form,  it  has  been  an  article  of  trade  with  every 
regular  optician."  Notwithstanding  these  great  improve- 
ments, no  discovery  of  importance  had  yet  been  achieved 
by  the  Reflecting  Telescope,  and  nearly  three  quarters 
of  a  century  had  elapsed  without  any  extension  of  our 
knowledge  of  the  Solar  and  Sidereal  Systems.  "  This, 
however,"  continues  Sir  David,  "  was  only  one  of  those 
stationary  intervals  during  which  human  genius  holds  its 
breath,  in  order  to  take  a  new  and  loftier  flight.  It  was 
reserved  for  Sir  William  Herschel  and  the  Earl  of  Rosse 
to  accomplish  the  great  work,  and,  by  the  construction 
of  telescopes  of  gigantic  size,  to  extend  the  boundaries  of 
the  Solar  System,  to  lay  open  the  hitherto  unexplored  re- 
cesses of  the  sidereal  world,  and  to  bring  within  the  grasp 
of  reason  those  nebular  regions  to  which  imagination  had 
not  ventured  to  soar." 

Sir  William  Herschel,  one  of  the  very  greatest  names 
in  the  modern  history  of  astronomical  discovery,  was  self- 
instructed  in  the  science  in  which  he  earned  his  high  rep- 
utation. He  was  born  at  Hanover  in  1738,  and  was  the 
son  of  a  musician  in  humble  circumstances.  Brought  up 
to  his  father's  profession,  he  was  placed,  at  the  age  cf 


232  SIR    WILLIAM    HERSCHBL. 

fourteen,  in  the  band  of  the  Hanoverian  Guards,  a  detach- 
ment of  which  being  ordered  to  England  in  1757,  young 
Herschel  accompanied  it,  and  remained  to  try  his  fortune 
in  London.  Here  he  had  to  struggle  with  many  difficul- 
ties. He  then  passed  several  years  principally  in  giving 
lessons  in  music  to  private  pupils  in  different  towns  in 
the  north  of  England.  In  1765  he  obtained  the  situation 
of  organist  at  Halifax ;  and  next  year  he  was  appointed 
to  the  same  office  in  the  Octagon  Chapel  at  Bath,  where 
he  settled,  with  the  certain  prospect  of  deriving  a  good 
income  from  his  profession,  if  he  had  made  that  his  only 
or  his  chief  object.  There  is  a  mass  of  stories  relating 
to  his  musical  occupations,  none  of  which  have  any  cer- 
tain foundation :  as,  that  he  played  in  the  Pump-room 
band  at  Bath ;  and  that,  when  a  candidate  for  the  situa- 
tion of  organist,  he  helped  his  performance  by  placing 
upon  holdiug  notes  little  bits  of  lead,  which  he  dexter- 
ously removed  in  time. 

But  long  before  this,  while  yet  only  an  itinerant  teach- 
er of  music  in  country  towns,  Herschel  had  assiduously 
devoted  his  leisure  to  the  acquiring  of  a  knowledge  of 
the  Italian,  the  Latin,  and  the  Greek  languages.  He  then 
applied  himself  to  the  study  of  Robert  Smith's  profound 
Treatise  on  Harmonics,  for  which  purpose  it  was  neces- 
sary that  Herschel  should  make  himself  a  mathematician ; 
and  to  accomplish  this,  he  laid  aside  all  other  pursuits  of 
his  leisure.  At  Bath  he  devoted  still  more  time  to  math- 
ematical studies.  In  the  course  of  time  he  obtained  a 
competent  knowledge  of  geometry ;  he  next  studied  the 
different  branches  of  science  which  depend  upon  the 
mathematics,  his  attention  being  first  attracted  by  the 
kindred  departments  of  astronomy  and  optics.  He  now 
became  anxious  to  observe  with  his  own  eyes  those  won- 
ders of  the  heavens  of  which  he  had  read  so  much,  and 
for  that  purpose  he  borrowed  from  an  acquaintance  a 
two-feet  Gregorian  telescope.  This  instrument  interest- 
ed him  so  greatly  that  he  commissioned  a  friend  in  Lon- 
don to  purchase  one  for  him  of  a  somewhat  larger  size ; 
but,  fortunately  for  science,  he  found  the  price  beyond 
what  he  could  afford.  To  make  up  for  his  disappoint- 
ment, he  resolved  to  attempt  to  construct  with  his  own 
hands  a  telescope  for  himself;  and  after  encountering 


DISCO YEEY    OF    URANUS.  233 

innumerable  difficulties  in  the  progress  of  his  task,  he  at 
last  succeeded,  and  in  the  year  1774  he  completed  a  five- 
feet  Newtonian  reflector,  with  which  he  distinctly  saw 
the  ring  of  Saturn  and  the  satellites  of  Jupiter. 

Herschel  now,  becoming  dissatisfied  with  the  perform- 
ance of  his  first  instrument,  renewed  his  labors,  and  in 
no  long  time  produced  telescopes  of  seren,  ten,  and  even 
twenty  feet  focal  distance.  In  fashioning  the  mirrors 
for  these  instruments  his  perseverance  was  indefatigable. 
For  his  seven-feet  reflector  he  actually  finished  and  made 
trial  of  two  hundred  mirrors  before  he  found  one  that 
satisfied  him ;  one  hundred  and  fifty  for  his  ten-feet,  and 
above  eighty  for  his  twenty-feet  instrument.  He  usually 
worked  at  a  mirror  fop  twelve  or  fourteen  hours,  without 
quitting  his  occupation  for  a  moment.  He  would  not 
even  take  his  hand  from  what  he  was  about  to  help  him- 
self to  his  food,  and  the  little  that  he  ate  when  so  em- 
ployed wTas  put  into  his  mouth  by  his  sister.  He  gave 
the  mirror  its  proper  shape  more  by  a  certain  natural 
tact  than  by  rule  ;  and  when  his  hand  was  once  in,  as 
the  phrase  is,  he  was  afraid  that  the  perfection  of  the 
finish  might  be  impaired  by  the  least  intermission  of  his 
labors. 

It  was  on  the  13th  of  March,  1781,  that  Herschel  made 
the  discovery  to  which  he  owes,  perhaps,  most  of  his 
popular  reputation.  On  the  evening  of  the  above  day, 
having  turned  his  telescope  (an  excellent  seven-feet  re- 
flector of  his  own  constructing)  to  a  particular  part  of 
the  sky,  he  observed  among  the  other  stars  one  Avhich 
seemed  to  shine  with  a  more  steady  radiance  than  those 
around  it.  He  determined  to  observe  it  more  narrowly ; 
after  some  hours,  it  had  perceptibly  changed  its  place — 
a  fact  which  the  next  day  became  still  more  indisputa- 
ble. The  Astronomer  Royal,  Dr.  Maskelyne,  concluded 
that  the  luminary  could  be  nothing  else  than  a  new  com- 
et ;  but  in  a  few  days  it  became  evident  that  it  was,  in 
reality,  a  ^  hitherto  undiscovered  planet;  this  Herschel 
named  the  Georgium  Sidus,  or  Georgian  Star,  in  honor 
of  the  King  of  England ;  but  it  has  been  more  generally 
called  either  Herschd,  after  its  discoverer,  or  Uranus. 
The  diameter  of  this  new  globe  has  been  found  to  be 
nearly  four  and  a  half  times  larger  than  our  own ;  its 


234  DISCOVERY    OF   THE   MOOXS    OF    UEAXUS. 

size  altogether  eighty  times  that  of  our  earth ;  its  yea 
is  as  long  as  eighty-three  of  ours ;  its  distance  from  tin 
sun  is  nearly  eighteen  hundred  millions  of  miles,  or  more 
than  nineteen  times  that  of  the  earth ;  its  density,  as 
compared  with  that  of  the  earth,  is  nearly  as  22  to  100, 
so  that  its  entire  weight  is  not  far  from  eighteen  times 
that  of  our  planet.  Herschel  afterward  discovered  suc- 
cessively no  fewer  than  six  satellites  or  moons  belong- 
ing to  his  new  planet.  Mr.  De  Morgan  almost  pro- 
phetically wrote:  "Its  name  is  appropriate,  inasmuch 
as  Uranus  is  the  father  of  Saturn  in  mythology;  but 
what  will  be  done  if  a  new  planet  should  be  discovered 
still  more  distant  than  Uranus?"  A  new  planet  has 
been  discovered  by  twTo  master  minds,  independently  of 
each  other,  in  a  manner  which  renders  the  discovery  of 
Uranus  deeply  interesting. 

The  merit  of  this  discovery  is  in  itself  small.  It  is  the 
method  which  gave  rise  to  it,  on  which  this  part  of  Her- 
schel's  fame  must  rest.  Perceiving  how  much  depended 
on  an  exact  knowledge  of  telescopic  phenomena,  and  a 
perfect  acquaintance  with  the  effect  produced  by  differ- 
ences of  instrumental  construction,  he  commenced  a  reg- 
ular examination  of  the  heavens,  taking  the  stars  system- 
atically in  series,  and  using  one  telescope  throughout. 
He  was  not  a  mere  dilettante  star-gazer,  but  a  volunteer, 
carrying  on,  with  no  great  pecuniary  means,  a  laborious 
and  useful  train  of  investigation. 

Herschel's  name  now  became  universally  known.  The 
Copley  Medal  was  awarded  to  him  by  the  Royal  Society. 
The  king  attached  him  to  his  court  as  private  astrono- 
mer, with  a  salary  of  £400  a  year ;  and  soon  after  this 
he  came  to  reside  first  at  Datchet,  and  then  ^  at  Slough, 
near  Windsor.  He  now  devoted  himself  entirely  to  sci- 
ence. In  this  year,  1781,  he  began  a  thirty-feet  aerial 
reflector,  with  a  speculum  three  feet  in  diameter ;  but  as 
it  was  cracked  in  the  operation  of  annealing,  and  as  an- 
other of  the  same  size  was  lost  in  the  fire  from  a  failure 
in  the  furnace,  his  hopes  were  disappointed.  This  double 
accident,  however,  only  acted  as  a  stimulus  to  higher 
achievements,  and  no  doubt  suggested  the  idea  of  mak- 
ing a  still  larger  instrument,  and  of  obtaining  pecuniary 
aid  for  its  accomplishment.  In  1785,  at  the  request  of 


HEBSCHEL'S  FOETY-FEET  TELESCOPE.  235 

Sir  William  Herschel,  and  with  the  sanction  of  the  Coun- 
cil of  the  Royal  Society,  the  president,  Sir  Joseph  Banks, 
laid  before  George  III.  the  great  astronomer's  scheme 
for  the  construction  of  a  Reflecting  Telescope  of  colossal 
dimensions.  The  king  approved  of  the  plan,  and  offered 
to  defray  the  whole  expense  of  it ;  a  noble  act  of  liberal- 
ity, which  has  never  been  imitated  by  any  other  British 
sovereign. 

Herschel  next  conceived  the  happy  idea  of  "  Gauging 
the  Heavens,"  by  counting  the  number  of  stars  which 
passed  at  different  heights  and  in  various  directions,  over 
the  field  of  view  of  fifteen  minutes  in  diameter  of  his 
twenty-feet  reflecting  telescope.  The  field  of  view  each 
time  embraced  only  l-838,000th  of  the  whole  heavens ; 
and  it  would  therefore  require,  according  to  Struve, 
eighty-three  years  to  gauge  the  wThole  sphere  by  a  sim- 
ilar process. 

Toward  the  close  of  this  year  Herschel  began  te  con- 
struct his  Reflecting  Telescope,  forty  feet  in  length,  and 
having  a  speculum  fully  four  feet  in  diameter.  It  was 
completed  August  27,  1789 ;  and  Sir  William  has  left  a 
very  complete  description  of  the  operations : 

I  began  (says  Herschel)  to  construct  the  forty-feet  telescope  about 
the  latter  end  of  1785.  In  the  whole  of  the  apparatus  none  but  com- 
mon workmen  were  employed ;  for  I  made  drawings  of  every  part  of 
it,  by  which  it  was  easy  to  execute  the  work,  as  I  constantly  inspected 
and  directed  every  person's  labor,  though  sometimes  there  were  no 
less  than  forty  different  workmen  employed  at  the  same  time.  While 
the  stand  of  the  telescope  was  preparing,  I  also  began  the  construc- 
tion of  the  great  mirror,  of  which  I  inspected  the  casting,  grinding, 
and  polishing ;  and  the  work  was  in  this  manner  carried  on  with  no 
other  interruption  than  what  was  occasioned  by  the  removal  of  all  the 
apparatus  from  Clay  Hall,  where  I  then  lived,  to  my  present  situation 
at  Slough.  Here,  soon  after  my  arrival,  I  began  to  lay  the  founda- 
tion upon  which,  by  degrees,  the  whole  structure  was  raised  as  it  now 
stands ;  and  the  speculum  being  highly  polished  and  put  into  the  tube, 
I  had  the  first  view  through  it  on  February  9,  1787.  I  do  not,  how- 
ever, date  the  completing  of  the  instrument  till  much  later ;  for  the 
first  speculum,  by  a  mismanagement  of  the  person  who  cast  it,  came 
out  thinner  on  the  centre  of  the  back  than  was  intended,  and  on  ac- 
count of  its  weakness  would  not  permit  a  good  figure  to  be  given  to 
it.  A  second  mirror  was  cast  Jan.  26,  1788,  but  it  cracked  in  cooling. 
Feb.  16,  we  recast  it  with  peculiar  attention  to  the  shape  of  the  back, 
and  it  proved  to  be  of  a  proper  degree  of  strength.  Oct.  24,  it  was 
brought  to  a  pretty  good  figure  and  polish,  and  I  observed  the  planet 
Saturn  with  it.  But  not  being  satisfied,  I  continued  to  work  upon  it 


236  HEESCHEL'S  GEEAT  TELESCOPE. 

till  Aug.  27,  1789,  when  it  was  tried  upon  the  fixed  stars,  and  I  found 
it  to  give  a  pretty  sharp  image.  Large  stars  were  a  little  affected 
with  scattered  light,  owing  to  many  remaining  scratches  in  the  mir- 
ror. Aug.  28,  1789,  having  brought  the  telescope  to  the  parallel  of 
Saturn,  I  discovered  a  sixth  satellite  of  that  planet ;  and  I  also  saw 
the  spots  upon  Saturn  hotter  than  I  had  ever  seen  them  hefore,  so 
that  I  may  date  the  finishing  of  the  forty-feet  telescope  from  that 
time.—  Phil.  Trans,  for  1790. 

The  thickness  of  the  speculum,  which  was  uniform  in  every  part, 
was  3?  inches,  and  its  weight  nearly  2118  pounds;  the  metal  being 
composed  of  32  copper,  and  10'7  of  tin.  The  speculum,  when  not  in 
use,  was  preserved  from  damp  by  a  tin  cover,  fitted  upon  a  rim  of 
close-grained  cloth.  The  tube  of  the  telescope  was  39  feet  4  inches 
long,  and  its  width  4  feet  10  inches;  it  was  made  of  iron,  and  was 
3000  pounds  lighter  than  if  it  had  been  made  of  wood.  The  observer 
was  seated  in  a  suspended  movable  seat  at  the  mouth  of  the  tube,  and 
viewed  the  image  of  the  object  with  a  magnificent  lens  or  eye-piece. 
The  focus  of  the  speculum,  or  place  of  the  image,  was  within  4  inches 
of  the  mouth  of  the  lower  side  of  the  tube,  and  came  forward  into  the 
air,  so  that  there  was  a  space  for  part  of  the  head  above  the  eye,  to 
prevent  it  from  interrupting  many  of  the  rays  going  from  the  object  to 
the  mirror.  The  eye-piece  moved  in  a  tube  carried  by  a  slider  direct- 
ed to  the  centre  of  the  speculum,  and  fixed  on  an  adjustible  founda- 
tion at  the  mouth  of  the  tube. 

The  very  first  moment  this  magnificent  instrument  was 
directed  to  the  heavens,  a  new  body  was  added  to  the 
Solar  System,  namely,  Saturn  and  six  satellites,  and  in 
less  than  a  month  after,  the  seventh  satellite  of  Saturn ; 
"  an  object,"  says  Sir  John  Herschel,  "  of  a  far  higher 
order  of  difficulty." 

Herschel's  Great  Telescope  stood  on  the  lawn  in  the 
rear  of  his  house  at  Slough,  and  some  of  our  readers,  like 
ourselves,  may  remember  its  extraordinary  aspect  when 
seen  from  the  Bath  coach-road  and  the  road  to  Windsor. 
The  difficulty  of  managing  so  large  an  instrument,  requir- 
ing, as  it  did,  two  assistants  in  addition  to  the  observer 
himself  and  the  person  employed  to  note  the  time,  pre- 
vented its  being  much  used ;  and  in  1839,  the  wood-work 
of  the  telescope  being  decayed,  Sir  John  Herschel  had  it 
cleared  away :  piers  were  erected  on  which  the  tube  was 
placed ;  that  was  of  iron,  and  so  well  preserved  that,  al- 
though not  more  than  one  twentieth  of  an  inch  thick, 
when  in  the  horizontal  position,  it  contained  all  Sir  John's 
family,  besides  portions  of  the  machinery  and  polishing 
apparatus  to  the  weight  of  a  great  many  tons.  Sir  John 
attributes  this  great  strength  and  resistance  to  decay  to 


HEKSCHEL'S  DISCOVERIES.  237 

its  internal  structure,  very  similar  to  that  since  patented 
as  Corrugated  Iron  Roofing,  the  idea  of  which  originated 
with  Sir  William  Herschel  at  the  time  he  constructed  the 
Great  Telescope.  By  the  system  of  triangular  arrange- 
ment or  diagonal  bracing  adopted  in  the  wood-work  also, 
much  strength  was  gained. 

The  entire  expense  of  the  Great  Telescope,  so  munifi- 
cently defrayed  by  George  III.,  including,  of  course,  the 
cost  of  the  construction  of  tools  and  the  apparatus  for 
casting,  grinding,  and  figuring  the  reflectors,  of  which 
two  were  constructed,  amounted  to  £4000.  His  abode 
at  Slough  became,  as  Fourier  remarks,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  spots  of  the  civilized  world.  M.  Arago  says 
it  may  confidently  be  asserted  that  at  the  little  house  and 
garden  at  Slough  more  discoveries  have  been  made  than 
at  any  other  spot  on  the  surface  of  the  globe.  Herschel 
married  a  widow  lady,  Mrs.  Mary  Pitt.  He  soon  rose  to 
affluent  circumstances,  partly  by  the  profits  arising  from 
the  sale  of  his  mirrors  for  reflecting  telescopes ;  and  he 
died  wealthy  on  August  23,  1822.  He  left  one  son,  Sir 
John  Herschel,  one  of  the  most  active  and  successful  ad- 
herents of  science  that  our  day  has  produced,  and  who, 
for  four  years,  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  was  engaged 
in  making  a  survey  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere  similar 
to  the  surveys  which  his  father  made  of  the  Northern. 

Herschel  must  be  remembered  by  the  number  of  bodies 
which  he  added  to  the  Solar  System,  making  that  num- 
ber half  as  large  again  as  he  found  it ;  and  no  one  indi- 
vidual ever  added  so  much  to  the  facts  on  which  our 
knowledge  of  the  Solar  System  is  grounded.  Some  idea 
may  be  formed  of  his  wonderful  diligence  from  the  fact 
that  there  are  no  less  than  sixty-nine  papers  by  him  in 
the  Philosophical  Transactions.  The  earliest  writing 
of  Herschel  is  said  to  be  the  answer  to  the  prize  question 
in  the  Ladies'*  Diary  for  1779. 

Herschel,  by  the  various  means  we  have  glanced  at,  ac- 
quired success  such  as  the  world  had  never  seen  before, 
nnd  a  reputation  of  two-fold  splendor,  appreciable  in  its 
different  parts  by  men  of  the  lowest  as  well  as  the  high- 
est order  of  cultivation.  Admirable  as  were  the  imme- 
diate results  of  his  telescopic  observations,  they  would 
have  failed  to  secure  him  the  exalted  place  now  univer- 


238  HERSCHEL'S  DISCOVERIES. 

sally  assigned  to  him  in  the  history  of  astronomical  dis- 
covery if  he  had  not  at  the  same  time  been  endowed  with 
a  mind  of  rare  originality  and  power,  combined  with  a 
strong  turn  for  speculation  (Grant's  Hist.  Physical  As- 
tronomy, p.  534).  To  him  we  owe  the  first  proof  that 
there  exist  in  the  universe  organized  systems  besides  our 
own;  while  his  magnificent  foreseeings  of  the  Milky 
Way,  the  constitution  of  nebulae,  etc.,  first  opened  the 
road  to  the  conception  that  what  was  called  the  universe 
might  be,  and  in  all  probability  is,  but  a  detached  and 
minute  portion  of  that  interminable  series  of  similar  form- 
ations which  ought  to  bear  the  name.  Imagination 
roves  with  ease  upon  such  subjects ;  but  even  that  dar- 
ing faculty  would  have  rejected  the  ideas  which,  after 
Herschel's  observations,  became  sober  philosophy. 


THE  EAEL  OF  ROSSE'S  REFLECTING 
TELESCOPES. 

To  Sir  Humphrey  Davy's  remark  that  "  the  aristocracy 
may  be  searched  in  vain  for  philosophers,"  we  find  a 
brilliant  exception  in  the  genius,  the  talent,  the  patience, 
and  the  liberality  with  which  an  Irish  nobleman  has  con- 
structed telescopes  far  transcending  in  magnitude  and 
power  all  previous  instruments,  whether  they  were  the 
result  of  private  wealth,  or  of  royal  or  national  munifi- 
cence. That  nobleman  is  Lord  Oxmantown,  who  inaugu- 
rated his  succession  to  the  Earldom  of  Rosse  by  the  con- 
struction of  a  colossal  instrument  which  has  already 
achieved  brilliant  discoveries.  Dr.  Robinson  has  elo- 
quently expressed  his  delight  "  that  so  high  a  problem 
as  the  construction  of  a  six-feet  speculum  should  have 
been  mastered  by  one  of  his  countrymen — by  one  whose 
attainments  are  an  honor  to  his  rank,  an  example  to  his 
equals,  and  an  instance  of  the  perfect  compatibility  of  the 
highest  intellectual  pursuits  with  the  most"  perfect  dis- 
charge of  the  duties  of  domestic  and  social  life." 

In  the  improvement  of  the  Reflecting  Telescope,  the 
first  object  has  always  been  to  increase  the  magnifying 
power  and  light  by  the  construction  of  as  large  a  mirror 
as  possible ;  and  to  this  point  Lord  Rosse's  attention  was 
directed  as  early  as  1828,  the  field  of  operation  being  at 
his  lordship's  seat,  Birr  Castle,  Parsonstown,  about  fifty 
miles  west  of  Dublin.  For  this  high  branch  of  scientific 
inquiry  Lord  Rosse  was  well  fitted,  by  a  rare  combina- 
tion of  "  talent  to  devise,  patience  to  bear  disappoint- 
ment, perseverance,  profound  mathematical  knowledge, 
mechanical  skill,  and  uninterrupted  leisure  from  other 
pursuits."*  All  these,  however,  would  not  have  been 
sufficient,  had  not  a  command  of  money  been  added,  the 
gigantic  telescope  we  are  about  to  describe  having  cost 
certainly  not  less  than  twelve  thousand  pounds. 

*  Description  of  the  Great  Telescope,  by  Thomas  Wood,  M.D. ;  4th 
edit.,  1851. 


240  GRINDING    AND   POLISHING    SPECULA. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  detail  the  admirable  contriv- 
ances and  processes  by  which  Lord  Rosse  prepared  him- 
self for  the  great  work.  Like  Herschel,  he  employed 
common  workmen.  Mr.  Weld  says,  in  his  excellent  ac- 
count of  the  monster  telescope,  "  All  the  workmen  are 
Irish ;  they  were  trained  under  the  superintendence  of 
Lord  Rosse,  being  taken  from  common  hedge-schools, 
and  selected  in  consequence  of  their  giving  evidence  of 
mechanical  skill.  The  foreman,  a  man  of  great  intelli- 
gence, is  of  similar  origin ;  and  Lord  Rosse  assured  me 
such  was  his  skill,  that  during  his  lordship's  absence  he 
felt  confident  that  his  foreman  could  construct  a  tele- 
scope with  a  six-foot  speculum  similar  in  all  respects  to 
that  now  erected." 

In  order  to  grind  and  polish  large  specula,  Lord  Rosse 
soon  perceived  that  a  steam-engine  and  appropriate  ma- 
chinery were  necessary ;  for  this  purpose  he  constructed 
and  used  an  engine  of  two-horse  power.  ^ 

Lord  Eosse  ground  and  polished  specula  15  inches,  2  feet,  and  3  feet 
in  diameter,  before  he  commenced  the  colossal  instrument.  He  first 
ascertained  the  most  useful  combination  of  metals  for  specula,  in 
whiteness,  porosity,  and  hardness,  to  be  copper  and  tin.  Of  this  com- 
pound the  reflector  was  cast  in  pieces,  which  were  fixed  on  a  bed  of 
zinc  and  copper— a  species  of  brass  which  expanded  in  the  same  de- 
gree by  heat  as  the  pieces  of  the  speculum  themselves.  They  were 
ground  as  one  body  to  a  true  surface,  and  then  polished  by  machinery 
moved  by  the  steam-engine.  The  peculiarities  of  this  mechanism  were 
entirely  Lord  Kosse's  invention,  and  the  result  of  close  calculation  and 
observation :  they  were  chiefly,  placing  the  speculum  with  the  face 
upward,  regulating  the  temperature  by  having  it  immersed  in  water, 
usually  at  55°  Fahr.,  and  regulating  the  pressure  and  velocity.  This 
was  found  to  work  a  perfect  spherical  figure  in  large  surfaces,  with  a 
degree  of  precision  unattainable  by  the  hand ;  the  polisher,  by  work- 
ing above  and  upon  the  face  of  the  speculum,  being  enabled  to  exam- 
ine the  operation  as  it  proceeded  without  removing  the  speculum, 
which,  when  a  ton  weight,  is  no  easy  matter. 

The  contrivance  for  doing  this  is  very  beautiful.  The  machine  is 
placed  in  a  room  at  the  bottom  of  a  high  tower,  in  the  successive  floors 
of  which  trap-doors  can  be  opened.  A  mast  is  elevated  on  the  top  of 
the  tower,  so  that  its  summit  is  about  90  feet  above  the  speculum.  A 
dial-plate  is  attached  to  the  top  of  the  mast;  and  a  small  plane  spec- 
ulum and  eye-piece,  with  proper  adjustments,  are  so  placed  that  the 
combination  becomes  a  Newtonian  telescope,  and  the  dial-plate  the 
object.  The  last  and  most  important  part  of  the  process  of  working 
the  speculum  is  to  give  it  a  true  parabolic  figure,  that  is,  such  a  figure 
that  each  portion  of  it  should  reflect  the  incident  ray  to  the  same 


GRINDING    AND   POLISHING   SPECULA.  241 

focus.  Lord  Rosse's  operations  for  this  purpose  consist,  1st,  of  a 
stroke  of  the  first  eccentric,  which  carries  the  polisher  along  one  third 
of  the  diameter  of  the  speculum ;  2d,  a  transverse  stroke  twenty-one 
times  slower,  and  equal  to  0'27  of  the  same  diameter,  measured  on 
the  edge  of  the  tank,  or  1-7  beyond  the  centre  of  the  polisher;  3d,  a 
rotation  of  the  speculum  performed  in  the  same  time  as  thirty-seven 
of  the  first  strokes ;  and,  4th,  a  rotation  of  the  polisher  in  the  same 
direction  about  sixteen  times  slower.  If  these  rules  are  attended  to, 
the  machine  will  give  the  true  parabolic  figure  to  the  speculum, 
whether  it  be  six  inches  or  three  feet  in  diameter.  In  the  three-feet 
speculum,  the  figure  is  so  true  with  the  whole  aperture  that  it  is 
thrown  out  of  focus  by  a  motion  of  less  than  the  thirtieth  of  an  inch ; 
' '  and  even  with  a  single  lens  of  one  eighth  of  an  inch  focus,  giving 
a  power  of  2592,  the  dots  on  a  watch-dial  are  still  in  some  degree  de- 
fined." 

Thus  was  executed  the  three-feet  speculum  for  the 
twenty-six-feet  telescope  placed  upon  the  lawn  at  Par- 
sonstown,  which  in  1840  snowed  with  powers  up  to  1000 
and  even  1600,  and  which  resolved  nebulae  into  stars,  and 
destroyed  that  symmetry  of  form  in  globular  nebulae 
upon  which  was  founded  the  hypothesis  of  the  gradual 
condensation  of  nebulous  matter  into  suns^and  planets. 

This  instrument  also  discovered  a  multitude  of  new  ob- 
jects in  the  moon,  as  a  mountainous  tract  near  Ptolemy, 
every  ridge  of  which  is  dotted  with  extremely  minute 
craters,  and  two  black  parallel  stripes  in  the  bottom  of 
Aristarchus.  Dr.  Robinson,  in  his  address  to  the  British 
Association  in  1843,  stated  that  in  this  telescope  a  build- 
ing the  size  of  the  Court  House  at  Cork  would  be  easily 
visible  on  the  lunar  surface. 

This  instrument  was  scarcely  out  of  Lord  Rosse's 
hands,  before  he  resolved  to  attempt,  by  the  same  proc- 
esses, to  construct  another  reflector,  which  was  com- 
pleted early  in  1845.  The  speculum  has  six  feet  of  clear 
aperture,  and  therefore  an  area  four  times  greater  than 
that  of  the  three-feet  speculum.  The  focal  length  is  fifty- 
four  feet.  ^  It  weighs  four  tons,  and,  with  its  supports,  it 
is  seven  times  as  heavy  as  the  four-feet  mirror  of  Sir 
William  Herschel.  The  Rosse  speculum  is  placed  in  one 
of  the  sides  of  a  cubical  wooden  box,  about  eight  feet  a 
side,  in  which  there  is  a  door,  through  which  two  men 
go  in  to  remove  or  to  replace  the  cover  of  the  mirror. 
To  the  opposite  end  is  fastened  the  tube,  which  is  made 
of  deal  staves  an  inch  thick,  hooped  with  iron  clamp- 

Lt 


242 

rings  like  a  huge  cask.  It  carries  at  its  upper  end,  and 
in  the  axis  of  the  tube,  a  small  oval  speculum  six  inches 
in  its  lesser  diameter.  The  tube  is  eight  feet  diameter 
in  the  middle,  but  tapering  to  seven  at  the  extremities, 
and  is  furnished  with  internal  diaphragms  about  six  and 
a  half  feet  in  aperture.  The  late  Dean  of  Ely  (Dr.  Pea- 
cock) walked  through  the  tube  with  an  umbrella  up. 
The  speculum  was  cast  on  the  13th  of  April,  1842, 
ground  in  1843,  polished  in  1844,  and  in  February,  1845, 
the  telescope  was  ready  to  be  tried.  The  speculum  was 
polished  in  six  hours,  in  the  same  time  as  a  small  specu- 
lum, and  with  the  same  facility,  and  no  particular  care 
was  taken  in  preparing  the  polisher. 

The  casting  of  a  speculum  of  nearly  four  tons  was  an 
object  of  great  interest  as  well  as  of  difficulty.  In  order 
to  insure  uniformity  of  metal,  the  blocks  from  the  first 
melting,  which  was  effected  in  three  furnaces,  were 
broken  up,  and  the  pieces  from  each  of  the  furnaces 
were  placed  in  three  separate  casks,  A,  B,  and  C ;  then, 
in  charging  the  crucibles  for  the  final  melting  of  the 
speculum,  successive  portions  from  cask  A  were  put 
into  furnaces  a,  6,  c  /  from  B  into  #,  c,  a  ;  and  so  on. 

In  order  to  prevent  the  metal  from  bending  or  chang- 
ing its  form,  Lord  Rosse  made  the  specimen  rest  upon  a 
surface  of  pieces  of  cast  iron  strongly  framed,  so  as  to  be 
stiff  and  light,  and  carrying  level's  to  give  lateral  sup- 
port ;  it  is  attached  to  an  immense  joint,  like  that  of  a 
pair  of  compasses  moving  round  a  pin,  in  order  to  give 
the  transverse  motion  for  following  the  star  in  right 
ascension.  This  pin  is  fixed  to  the  centre-piece  between 
two  trunnions,  like  those  of  an  enormous  mortar,  lying 
east  and  west,  and  upon  which  the  telescope  has  its  mo- 
tion in  altitude.  Two  specula  have  been  provided :  one 
contains  three  and  a  half,  and  the  other  four  tons  of 
metal,  the  composition  of  which  is  one  hundred  and 
twenty-six  parts  in  weight  of  copper  to  fifty-seven  and  a 
half  of  tin. 

The  enormous  tube  is  established  between  two  lofty 
castellated  piers  sixty  feet  high,  and  is  raised  to  different 
altitudes  by  a  strong  chain-cable  attached  to  the  top  of 
the  tube.  This  cable  passes  over  a  pulley  on  a  frame 
down  to  a  windlass  on  the  ground,  which  is  wrought  by 


GJREAT    KEFLECTING   TELESCOPE. 


243 


two  assistants.  To  the  frame  are  attached  chain-guys, 
fastened  to  the  counterweight;  and  the  telescope  is 
balanced  by  these  counterweights  suspended  by  chains, 
which  are  fixed  to  the  sides  of  the  tube,  and  pass  over 
large  iron  pulleys. 

On  the  eastern  pier  is  a  strong  cast-iron  semicircle, 
with  which  the  telescope  is  connected  by  a  rack-bar 
attached  to  the  tube  by  wheelwork ;  so  that,  by  means 
of  a  handle  near  the  eye-piece,  the  observer  can  move 
the  telescope  along  the  bar  on  either  side  of  the  meridi- 
an, to  the  distance  of  an  hour  for  an  equatorial  star.  On 
the  western  pier  are  stairs  and  galleries.  The  observing 
gallery  is  moved  along  a  railway  by  means  of  wheels 
and  a  winch,  and  the  galleries  can  be  raised  by  ingenious 
mechanism  to  various  altitudes.  Sometimes  the  galleries, 
filled  with  observers,  are  suspended  midway  between  the 
two  piers,  over  a  chasm  sixty  feet  deep. 

So  exquisitely  adjusted  is  the  machinery  connected 
with  this  gigantic  instrument,  that  the  tube  is  moved 
with  all  the  ease  and  precision  of  that  of  a  microscope. 

In  order  to  form  an  idea  of  the  effective  magnitude  of 
this  colossal  telescope  (says  Sir  David  Brewster),  we 
must  compare  it  with  other  instruments,  as  in  the  follow- 
ing table,  which  contains  the  number  of  square  inches  hi 
each  speculum,  on  the  supposition  that  they  were  square 
in  place  of'round: 


Names  of  makers.           Diameter  of  speculum.            Area  of  surface. 

Newton 

1  inch    . 

1  square  inch. 

it 

2-37  inches 

5-6  square  inches. 

Hadley 

4-5        " 

20 

si 

.       5           " 

25 

Hawksbce 

.       9           " 

81 

Ramage 

21           " 

441 

Lassels 

.      2  feet     . 

576 

Lord  Rosse 

.       2    "  .     . 

576 

(i 

.      3    "  .     . 

1296 

Herschel  .     - 

.       4    "  .     . 

2304 

Lord  Kosse    . 

.       6   «'  .     . 

.     5184 

This  magnificent  instrument,  by  far  the  most  powerful 
which  the  genius  of  man  has  hitherto  executed  for  the 
purpose  of  exploring  the  grand  phenomena  of  the  heav- 
ens, has  already,  in  the  hands  of  its  noble  owner,  done 
valuable  service  to  astronomy  by  the  light  which  it  has 


244  THE   EARL    OF   ROSSE's 

\ 

thrown  upon  the  structure  of  the  nebular  part  of  the 
universe.  Many  nebulae,  which  had  hitherto  resisted  all 
attempts  to  resolve  them  with  instruments  of  inferior 
power,  have  been  found  to  consist  wholly  of  stars. 
Others  exhibit  peculiarities  of  structure  totally  unex- 
pected. Thus  former  observers  suggested  the  probabili- 
ty of  the  nebula  No.  51  in  Messier's  catalogue  being  a 
vast  sidereal  system,  identical  in  structure  with  a  smaller 
one  in  its  immediate  vicinity,  and  to  which  it  offered  a 
striking  analogy.  The  telescope  of  Lord  Rosse  has, 
however,  destroyed  this  interesting  surmise,  by  showing 
the  nebula  to  be  of  a  totally  different  structure — to  be, 
in  fact,  composed  of  a  series  of  spiral  convolutions,  ar- 
ranged with  remarkable  regularity:  and  a  connection 
has  also  been  traced  by  means  of  these  spirals  between 
the  nebula  and  its  companion. 

By  means  of  the  telescope,  the  flat  bottom  of  the 
crater  in  the  moon  called  Albateginus  is  distinctly  seen 
to  be  strewed  with  blocks,  not  visible  with  less  powerful 
instruments ;  while  the  exterior  of  another  (Aristillus)  is 
intersected  with  deep  gullies  radiating  from  its  centre. 

"  We  have  in  the  mornings"  (says  Sir  David  Brewster) 
"walked  again  and  again,  and  ever  with  new  delight, 
along  the  mystic  tube ;  and  at  midnight,  with  its  distin- 
guished architect,  pondered  over  the  marvelous  sights 
which  it  discloses :  the  satellites,  and  belts  and  rings  of 
Saturn — the  old  and  new  ring,  which  is  advancing  with 
its  crest  of  waters  to  the  body  of  the  planet — the  rocks, 
and  mountains,  and  valleys,  and  extinct  volcanoes  of  the 
moon — the  crescent  of  Venus,  with  its  mountainous  out- 
line— the  systems  of  double  and  triple  stars — the  nebulae 
and  starry  clusters  of  every  variety  of  shape — and  those 
spiral  nebular  formations  which  baffle  human  comprehen- 
sion, and  constitute  the  greatest  achievement  in  modern 
discovery." 

The  Astronomer  Royal,  Mr.  Airy,  alludes  to  the  im- 
pression made  by  the  enormous  light  of  the  telescope — 
partly  by  the  modifications  produced  in  the  appearance 
of  nebulae  already  figured,  partly  by  the  great  number  of 
stars  seen  at  a  distance  from  the  Milky  Way,  and  partly 
from  the  prodigious  brilliancy  of  Saturn.  The  account 
given  by  another  astronomer  of  the  appearance  of  Jupiter 


GREAT    REFLECTING    TELESCOPE. 


245 


was  that  it  resembled  a  coach-lamp  in  the  telescope,  and 
this  well  expresses  the  blaze  of  light  which  is  seen  in  the 
instrument. 

A  new  difficulty  has,  however,  arisen  from  these  vast 
successes  in  telescopic  construction.  To  insure  the  best 
performance  of  a  telescope,  not  only  should  there  be  a 
cloudless  sky,  but  a  perfectly  quiescent  state  of  the  whole 
atmosphere — "  a  most  serene  and  quiet  air ;"  and  this  is 
indispensable  for  high  magnifying  powers ;  yet  so  rarely 
is  this  state  of  the  air  to  be  found  at  the  sea-level,  that 
Lord  Rosse  assures  us  that  whole  years  have  passed 
away  without  affording  him,  among  an  abundance  of 
clear  nights,  one  of  such  accurately  defining  quality  as 
to  enable  him  to  use  the  higher  magnifying  powers  of 
his  great  reflecting  telescope  to  any  advantage.  And 
this  is  a  difficulty  which  continually  increases  with  the 
size  and  excellence  of  the  telescopes  employed.  Hence 
was  suggested  the  expediency  of  transporting  powerful 
instruments  to  the  southern  hemisphere  for  the  physical 
observation  of  the  celestial  bodies;  and  in  1856  the  gov- 
ernment consented  to  a  summer  expedition  to  the  Peak 
of  Teneriffe,  when  Mr.  Piazzi  Smyth,  with  a  most  valuable 
equatorial  instrument,  at  elevations  of  8903  and  10,702 
feet,  found  the  skies  often  freer  from  haze,  the  stars 
always  decidedly  brighter,  and  the  definition  very  much 
better  than  near  the  level  of  the  sea. 


The  Earl  of  Rosse' 3  Great  Reflecting  Telescope. 


THE  INTENTION  OF  THE  MICEOSCOPE. 

SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER  has  sagaciously  observed  that, 
previous  to  the  introduction  of  glass,  the  microscopes  of 
the  present  day  could  not  have  been  constructed,  even  if 
their  theory  had  been  known ;  but  it  seems  strange  that 
a  variety  of  facts,  which  must  have  presented  themselves 
to  the  most  careless  observer,  should  not  have  led  to  the 
earlier  construction  of  optical  instruments.  Through  the 
spherical  drops  of  water  suspended  before  his  eye,  an  at- 
tentive observer  might  have  seen  magnified  some  minute 
body  placed  accidentally  in  its  anterior  focus ;  and  in  the 
eyes  of  fishes  and  quadrupeds,  which  he  uses  for  his  food, 
he  might  have  seen,  and  might  have  extracted,  the  beau- 
tiful lenses  which  they  contain.  Had  he  looked  through 
these  remarkable  lenses  and  spheres,  and  had  he  placed  the 
lens  of  the  smallest  minnow,  or  that  of  the  bird,  the  sheep, 
or  the  ox,  in  or  before  a  circular  aperture,  he  would  have 
possessed  a  microscope  or  microscopes  of  excellent  qual- 
ity, and  of  different  magnifying  powers.  No  such  ob- 
servations, however,  seem  to  have  been  made ;  and  even 
after  the  invention  of  glass,  and  its  conversion  into  glob- 
ular vessels,  through  which,  when  filled  with  any  fluid, 
objects  are  magnified,  the  Microscope  remained  undis- 
covered. 

The  earliest  magnifying  lens  of  which  we  have  any 
knowledge  was  one  rudely  made  of  rock-crystal,  which 
Mr.  Layard  found  among  a  number  of  glass  bowls  in  the 
northwest  palace  of  Nimroud ;  but  no  similar  lens  has 
been  found  and  described  to  induce  us  to  believe  that 
the  Microscope,  either  simple  or  compound,  was  invented 
and  used  as  an  instrument  previous  to  the  commencement 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  beginning  of  the  first 
century,  however,  Seneca  alludes  to  the  magnifying  power 
of  a  glass  globe  filled  with  water ;  but  as  he  only  states 
that  it  made  small  and  indistinct  letters  appear  larger 
and  more  distinct,  we  can  not  consider  such  a  casual  re- 
mark as  the  invention  of  the  single  microscope,  though 


THE    EARLIEST    MICROSCOPE.  247 

it  might  have  led  the  observer  to  try  the  effect  of  smaller 
globes,  and  thus  obtain  magnifying  powers  sufficient  to 
discover  phenomena  otherwise  invisible. 

Lenses  of  glass  were  undoubtedly  in  existence  in  the 
time  of  Pliny ;  but  at  that  period,  and  for  many  centuries 
afterward,  they  appear  to  have  been  used  only  as  burn- 
ing, or  as  reading  glasses,  and  no  attempt  seems  to  have 
been  made  to  form  them  of  so  small  a  size  as  to  entitle 
them  to  be  regarded  even  as  the  precursors  of  the  single 
microscope. 

No  person  has  claimed  to  be  the  inventor  of  the  single 
microscope.  According  to  Peter  Borell,  the  Jansens, 
spectacle-makers  at  Middleburg,  invented  the  compound 
microscope  in  1590,  and  presented  the  first  instrument  to 
Charles  Albert,  Archduke  of  Austria.  This  microscope 
is  stated  to  have  been  six  feet  long.  The  Dutch  have 
claimed  the  invention  for  Cornelius  Drebell,  of  Alkmaar, 
who  resided  in  London  as  mathematician  to  James  I. 
Font  ana,  an  Italian,  made  the  same  claim  for  himself; 
Viviani  asserts  that  Galileo,  his  master,  was  led  to  the 
discovery  of  the  microscope  from  that  of  the  telescope ; 
and  the  author  of  the  preface  to  the  works  of  Galileo, 
published  at  Milan  in  1808,  states  that  Galileo  invented 
the  microscope  and  the  telescope  about  the  same  time, 
and  that  he  applied  the  former  to  examine  objects  other- 
wise invisible.  The  instrument  consisted,  like  the  tele- 
scope, of  a  convex  and  a  concave  lens,  and  also  of  one 
lens  more  convex,  and  exhibited  the  structure  of  insects, 
and  made  visible  things  of  prodigious  littleness.  It  has 
been  conjectured  that  Galileo  might  have  made  the  mi- 
croscope in  imitation  of  Jansen's,  as  he  did  the  telescope, 
which  is  more  probable  than  that  he  was  the  original  in- 
ventor. 

Neither  of  these  assertions  has,  however,  been  proved ; 
and,  from  these  conflicting  circumstances,  it  is  obvious 
that  no  single  individual  can  be  considered  as  the  invent- 
or of  the  microscope.  Huyghens  is  of  opinion  that  the 
single  microscope  was  invented  not  long  after  the  tele- 
scope ;  and,  says  Sir  David  Brewster,  "  as  soon  as  two 
lenses  were  combined  to  magnify  distant  objects,  it  was 
impossible  to  overlook  their  influence  in  the  examination 
of  objects  that  were  near,  and  it  is  highly  probable  that 


248  IMPROVED   MICROSCOPES. 

the  different  individuals  whom  we  have  mentioned  may 
have  had  the  merit  of  inventing,  constructing,  and  using 
the  microscope." 

Dr.  Hooke  was  the  first  person  who  made  a  microscope 
from  a  single  sphere  of  glass,  from  the  twentieth  to  the 
fiftieth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  with  which  many  interest- 
ing phenomena  may  be  observed,  and  even  important  dis- 
coveries made.  Having  taken  a  clear  piece  of  glass,  Dr. 
Hooke  drew  it  out,  by  the  heat  of  a  lamp,  into  threads, 
which  he  melted  into  a  small  round  globule ;  and  this 
sphere  being  ground  on  a  whetstone,  and  then  polished 
on  a  metal  plate  with  tripoli,  he  placed  it  against  a  small 
hole  in  a  thin  piece  of  metal,  and  fixed  it  with  wax.  Thus 
filled  up,  Dr.  Hooke  says  that  "  it  will  both  magnify  and 
make  some  objects  more  distinct  than  any  of  the  great 
microscopes  can  do."  There  have  been  several  improv- 
ers of  this  single-glass  sphere. 

The  celebrated  Leuwenhoeck,  who  made  so  many  im- 
portant discoveries  with  the  single  miscroscope,  was  sup- 
posed to  have  used  only  glass  globules  formed  by  fusion  ; 
but  Mr.  Baker,  who  had  upon  his  table  when  he  wrote 
the  twenty-six  microscopes  which  Leuwenhoeck  left  as  a 
legacy  to  the  Royal  Society,  informs  us  that  a  double 
convex  lens,  and  not  a  sphere  or  globule,  was  in  each  of 
them.  These  small  lenses  are  ground  and  polished  by 
the  hand,  like  all  other  lenses ;  and  when  the  radii  of 
their  surfaces  are  as  one  to  six,  they  make  very  good  mi- 
croscopes. Leuwenhoeck  placed  the  lenses  between  two 
plates  of  silver  perforated  with  a  small  hole,  and  having 
before  it  a  movable  pin,  upon  which  to  place  the  object, 
and  adjust  it  to  distinct  vision.  With  magnifying  pow- 
ers varying  from  forty  to  one  hundred  and  sixty,  Leu- 
wenhoeck made  such  important  discoveries,  that  the  com- 
pound microscope  was  laid  aside  for  a  time,  and  super- 
seded in  England  for  many  years  by  the  ingenious  pock- 
et-microscope of  J.  Wilcox,  which,  for  nearly  three  quar- 
ters of  a  century,  was  manufactured  in  England. 

We  select  these  details  from  a  valuable  contribution 
by  Sir  David  Brewster  to  the  North  British  Review,  No. 
50,  in  which  the  author  gives  a  popular  account  of  the 
various  inventions  by  which  the  microscope  has  been 
brought  to  its  present  state  of  perfection,  and  become 


IMPROVED    MICROSCOPES.  249 

one  of  the  most  valuable  instruments  in  extending  almost 
every  branch  of  science.  At  the  commencement  of  the 
present  century  no  attempt  had  been  made  to  fit  up  the 
microscope  as  an  instrument  of  discovery,  and  to  accom- 
modate it  to  that  particular  kind  of  preparation  which  is 
required  for  the  preservation  and  scrutiny  of  minute  ob- 
jects. For  a  very  long  period  the  microscope  of  Drebell 
served  but  to  astonish  the  young  and  amuse  the  curious ; 
and  without  greatly  detracting  from  the  merits  of  Leu- 
wenhoeck,  and  other  naturalists  who  used  it,  we  may 
safely  assert  that,  till  it  became  achromatic  by  the  labors 
of  Lister,  Ross,*  and  others,  it  was  not  fitted  for  those 
noble  researches  in  nartual  history  and  physiology  in 
which  it  has  performed  so  important  a  part. 

*  This  skillful  optician  died  of  heart  disease,  Sept.  5,  1 859. 
L2 


SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER'S  KALEIDOSCOPE. 

THIS  optical  instrument  is  named  from  three  Greek 
words — Kalon  eidos,  a  beautiful  form,  and  scopeo,  I  see ; 
and  it  has  been  extensively  applied  to  the  creation  and 
exhibition  of  an  infinite  variety  of  perfectly  symmetrical 
figures.  The  idea  of  the  instrument  first  occurred  to  Sir 
David  Brewster  in  1814,  when  he  was  engaged  in  ex- 
periments on  the  polarization  of  light  by  reflections  from 
plates  of  glass.  Sir  David  observed  that  when  two 
planes  were  inclined  to  one  another,  and  the  eye  of  the 
spectator  was  nearly  in  the  produced  line  of  the  common 
section  of  their  planes,  the  farther  extremities  of  the  plate 
were  multiplied  by  successive  reflections,  so  as  to  exhibit 
the  appearance  of  a  circle  divided  into  sections ;  also, 
that  the  several  images  of  a  candle  near  those  extremi- 
ties were  similarly  disposed  about  a  centre.  In  repeat- 
ing, at  a  subsequent  period,  the  experiments  of  M.  Biot 
on  the  action  of  fluids  upon  light,  Sir  David  Brewster 
placed  the  fluids  in  a  trough  formed  by  two  plates  of 
glass  cemented  together  at  an  angle ;  and  the  eye  being 
necessarily  placed  at  one  end,  some  of  the  cement,  which 
had  been  passed  through  between  the  plates,  appeared 
to  be  arranged  into  a  regular  figure.  The  remarkable 
symmetry  which  it  presented  led  to  the  experimenter's 
investigation  of  the  cause  of  this  phenomenon,  and  in  so 
doing  he  discovered  the  leading  principles  of  the  Kaleid- 
oscope. 

The  first  Kaleidoscopes  constructed  by  Brewster  con- 
sisted simply  of  two  plane  mirrors  of  glass,  having  their 
posterior  surfaces  blackened,  in  order  to  prevent  any  re- 
flection of  light  from  them,  and  fixed  in  a  cylindrical 
tube.  The  objects  were  pieces  of  variously-colored  glass, 
attached  to  the  farther  ends  of  the  mirrors,  and  project- 
ing on  the  sectional  space  between  them ;  or  the  objects 
were  placed  between  two  very  thin  plates  of  glass,  and 
held  by  the  hand  or  fixed  in  a  cell  at  the  end  of  the 
tube :  in  some  cases,  these  plates  were  moved  across  the 


TILE    KALEIDOSCOPE.  251 

field  of  view,  and  in  others  they  were  made  to  turn  round 
upon  the  axis  of  the  tube.  The  pieces  of  colored  glass, 
or  other  objects  which  were  situated  in  the  section,  were, 
by  the  different  reflections,  made  to  appear  in  all  the  other 
sections,  and  thus  the  field  of  view  presented  the  appear- 
ance of  an  entire  object  or  pattern,  all  the  parts  of  which 
were  disposed  with  the  most  perfect  symmetry.  By 
moving  the  glass  plates  between  which  the  objects  were 
contained,  the  pattern  was  made  to  vary  in  form ;  and 
pleasing  varieties  in  the  tints  were  produced  by  moving 
the  instrument  so  that  the  light  of  the  sky  or  of  a  lamp 
might  fall  on  the  objects  in  different  directions. 

The  inventor  subsequently  found  means  to  obtain 
multiplied  images  of  such  objects  as  flowers,  trees,  and 
even  persons  or  things  in  motion,  and  thus  the  import- 
ance of  the  instrument  was  greatly  increased.  For  this 
purpose  he  caused  the  two  mirrors  to  be  fixed  in  a  tube 
as  before,  but  this  tube  was  contained  in  another,  from 
which,  like  the  eye-tube  of  a  telescope,  it  could  be  drawn 
at  pleasure  toward  the  eye :  at  the  opposite  end  of  the 
exterior  tube  was  fixed  a  glass  lens  of  convenient  focal 
length,  by  which  were  formed  images  of  different  objects 
in  the  upper  section,  and  which,  being  multiplied  by  suc- 
cessive reflections  from  the  mirrors,  produced  in  the  field 
of  view  symmetrical  patterns  of  great  beauty.  The 
properties  of  the  instrument  have  been  greatly  extend- 
ed ;  and  when  it  is  constructed  so  that  there  may  be  pro- 
jected on  a  screen  a  magnified  image  of  the  whole  pat- 
tern, and  the  tube  is  supported  on  a  ball-and-socket  joint, 
the  figures  in  its  field  may  be  easily  sketched  by  a  skill- 
ful artist,  and  great  assistance  thus  obtained  in  designing 
beautiful  patterns. 

Sir  David  Brewster  obtained  a  patent  for  his  Kaleido- 
scope, and  opticians  were  duly  authorized  by  him  to  ex- 
ecute and  sell  them.  The  public  did  not,  however,  ade- 
quately encourage  the  manufacture  of  instruments  of  a 
superior  kind,  which,  moreover,  were  expensive ;  while, 
in  violation  of  the  patent,  imitations  of  the  Kaleidoscope, 
rudely  and  inaccurately  constructed,  were  sold  at  low 
prices  by  unprincipled  persons.  It  is  calculated  that  not 
less  than  200,000  Kaleidoscopes  were  sold  in  three  months 
in  London  and  Paris ;  though,  out  of  this  number,  Sir 


252  THE   KALEIDOSCOPE. 

David  Brewster  says,  not  perhaps  1000  were  constructed 
upon  scientific  principles,  or  were  capable  of  giving  any 
thing  like  a  correct  idea  of  the  power  of  his  Kaleido- 
scope ;  so  that  the  inventor  gained  little  beyond  fame, 
though  the  large  sale  of  the  imperfect  instrument  must 
have  produced  considerable  profit.  The  effects  of  the 
instrument  have  been  rendered  highly  useful  in  the  in- 
dustrial arts,  especially  in  suggesting  patterns  for  car- 
pets, and  other  products  of  the  loom. 

The  writer  well  remembers,  in  1814-15,  in  a  large 
school,  the  avidity  with  which  pseudo- Kaleidoscopes 
were  formed  of  pasteboard  cylinders,  blackened  planes 
of  glass,  and  pieces  of  colored  glass,  when  the  fantastic 
variety  of  the  results  obtained  by  this  rude  means  scarce- 
ly foreshadowed  the  symmetrical  beauty  of  the  forms 
subsequently  obtained  by  more  exact  methods.  To  the 
school-boy  of  five-and-forty  years  since,  the  making  of 
the  Kaleidoscope  was  nearly  as  popular  a  recreation  as  is 
the  photographic  art  to  the  tyro  of  the  present  day. 


MAGIC  MIRRORS  AND  BURNING  LENSES. 

THE  famous  mirror  which  Ptolemy  Euergetes  caused 
to  be  placed  in  the  Pharos  at  Alexandria  belongs  to  the 
first  class.  This  mirror  is  stated  by  ancient  authors  to 
have  represented  accurately  every  thing  which  was  trans- 
acted throughout  all  Egypt,  both  on  water  and  on  land. 
Some  writers  affirm  that  upon  its  surface  an  enemy's  fleet 
could  be  seen  at  the  distance  of  600,000  paces ;  others 
say  more  than  100  leagues !  Abulfeda,  in  his  description 
of  Egypt,  states  this  mirror  to  have  been  of  "  Chinese 
iron,"  which  Buffon  considers  to  mean  polished  steel; 
but  a  writer  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine,  1805,  sup- 
poses the  metal  to  have  been  tutenag,  a  Chinese  metallic 
compound  capable  of  receiving  the  highest  polish.  The 
existence  of  Ptolemy's  mirror  has,  however,  been  gen- 
erally treated  as  a  fiction;  but  Father  Abbat,  in  his 
Amusemens  Philosophiques,  first  published  at  Marseilles 
in  1763,  considers  that  it  may  have  been  at  the  time  the 
only  mirror  of  its  kind,  and,  being  a  great  wonder,  its 
effects  may  have  been  greatly  exaggerated  ;  making  al- 
lowance for  which,  nothing  remains  "  but  that  at  some 
distance,  provided  nothing  was  interposed  between  the 
objects  and  the  mirror,  those  objects  were  seen  more  dis- 
tinctly than  with  the  naked  eye ;  and  that  with  the  mir- 
ror many  objects  were  seen  which,  because  of  their  dis- 
tance, were  imperceptible  without  it." 

It  is  certain  that,  under  some  circumstances,  objects 
may  be  seen  at  a  much  greater  distance  than  is  gener- 
ally supposed.  Thus  it  is  stated  that  the  Isle  of  Man  is 
clearly  visible  from  the  summit  of  Ben  Lomond,  in  Scot- 
land, or  120  miles  distant.  Brydone  states  that  from  the 
summit  of  Etna  mountains  200  miles  off  may  be  distin- 
guished; and  during  his  visit  to  Teneriffe  in  1856,  Mr. 
Piazzi  Smyth  saw  objects  at  a  much  greater  distance. 

Burning  Mirrors  have  been  celebrated  on  account  of 
their  size  and  extraordinary  effects.  One  of  these  optical 


254  GREAT  BURNING  LENS. 

machines  was  the  work  of  Stettala,  a  canon  of  Milan ;  it 
was  parabolic,  and,  acting  as  a  burning-glass,  inflamed 
wood  at  the  distance  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  paces.  Leonard 
Digges,  in  his  Pantometria,  1571,  states  that  "with  a 
glasse  framed  by  a  revolution  of  a  section  parabolicall,  I 
have  set  fire  to  powder  half  a  mile  and  more  distant." 
In  the  prosecution  of  this  subject,  the  celebrated  Napier 
and  Sir  Isaac  Newton  experimented  with  parabolic  re- 
flectors before  1673.  Vilette,  an  artist  and  optician  of 
Lyons,  constructed  three  mirrors  about  the  year  1670: 
one  of  these,  which  was  purchased  by  the  King  of  France, 
was  thirty  inches  in  diameter,  and  of  about  three  feet 
focus.  The  rays  of  the  sun  were  collected  by  it  into  the 
space  of  about  one  inch.  It  immediately  set  fire  to  the 
greenest  wood ;  it  fused  silver  and  copper  in  a  few  sec- 
onds ;  and  in  one  minute  vitrified  brick  and  flint  earth. 
A  mirror,  superior  even  to  these,  was  constructed  by 
Baron  von  Tchivnhausen  about  1687:  it  consisted  of  a 
metal  plate,  twice  as  thick  as  the  blade  of  a  common 
knife ;  it  was  five  feet  three  inches  in  breadth,  and  its 
focal  distance  was  three  feet  six  inches.  It  produced  the 
following  effects :  wood,  exposed  to  its  focus,  immediate- 
ly took  fire ;  copper  and  silver  passed  into  fusion  in  a  few 
minutes  ;  and  slate  was  transformed  into  a  kind  of  black 
glass,  which,  when  laid  hold  of  with  a  pair  of  pincers, 
could  be  drawn  out  into  filaments.  Pumice-stone  and 
fragments  of  crucibles,  which  had  withstood  the  most 
violent  furnaces,  were  also  vitrified. 

The  burning  lens  constructed  by  Mr.  Parker  many 
years  since,  at  an  expense  of  upward  of  £7000,  was  of 
flint-glass,  3  feet  in  diameter,  and  weighed  212  pounds; 
the  focal  length  being  6  feet  8  inches,  and  the  diameter 
of  the  focus  1  inch.  To  concentrate  the  rays  still  farther, 
a  second  lens  was  used,  and  reduced  the  diameter  of  the 
focus  to  half  an  inch.  Under  this  lens  every  kind  of  wood 
took  fire  in  an  instant,  whether  hard  or  green,  or  even 
soaked  in  water.  Thin  iron  plates  grew  hot  in  an  instant, 
and  then  melted.  Tiles,  slates,  and  all  kinds  of  earth, 
were  instantly  vitrified.  Sulphur,  pitch,  and  all  resinous 
bodies  melted  under  water.  Fir-wood,  exposed  to  the 
focus  under  water,  did  not  seem  changed;  but  when 
broken,  the  inside  was  burnt  to  a  coal.  Any  metal 


GKEAT  BURNING  LENS.  255 

whatever,  inclosed  in  charcoal,  melted  in  a  moment,  the 
fire  sparkling  like  that  of  a  forge.  When  copper  was 
melted,  and  thrown  down  quickly  into  cold  water,  it  pro- 
duced so  violent  a  shock  as  to  break  the  strongest  earthen 
vessels,  and  the  copper  was  entirely  dissipated.  Though 
the  heat  of  the  focus  was  so  intense  as  to  melt  gold  in  a 
few  seconds,  yet  there  was  so  little  heat  at  a  short  dis- 
tance from  the  focus  that  the  finger  might  be  placed  an 
inch  from  it  without  injury.  Mr.  Parker,  having  put  his 
finger  at  the  focus  to  try  the  sensation,  found  it  not  to 
resemble  that  produced  by  fire  or  a  lighted  candle,  but 
like  that  of  a  sharp  cut  with  a  lancet. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  PLANET  NEPTUNE. 

' '  Nothing  in  the  whole  history  of  astronomy  can  be  compared  to 
this." — The  Astronomer  Royal. 

SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER,  in  his  admirable  summary  of 
the  important  discoveries  in  physical  astronomy  which 
illustrated  the  century  that  followed  the  publication  of 
Newton's  Principia,  remarks  that, "  Brilliant  as  they  are, 
and  evincing  as  they  do  the  highest  genius,  yet  the  cen- 
tury in  which  we  live  has  been  rendered  remarkable  by 
a  discovery  which,  whether  we  view  it  in  its  theoretical 
relations  or  in  its  practical  results,  is  the  most  remarkable 
in  the  history  of  physical  astronomy.  In  the  motions  of 
the  planet  Uranus,  discovered  since  the  time  of  Newton, 
astronomers  had  been  for  a  long  time  perplexed  with 
certain  irregularities,  which  could  not  be  deduced  from 
the  action  of  the  other  planets.  M.  Bouvard,  who  con- 
structed tables  of  this  planet,  seeing  the  impossibility  of 
reconciling  the  ancient  with  the  modern  observations, 
threw  out  the  idea  that  the  irregularities  from  which  this 
discrepancy  arose  might  be  owing  to  the  action  of  an- 
other planet.  Our  countryman,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Hussey, 
conceived  'the  possibility  of  some  disturbing  body  be- 
yond Uranus ;'  and  Hanson,  with  whom  Bouvard  corre- 
sponded on  the  subject,  was  of  opinion  that  there  must 
be  two  new  planets  beyond  Uranus,  to  account  for  the 
irregularities.  In  1834  Dr.  Hussey  was  anxious  that  the 
Astronomer  Royal  should  assist  him  in  detecting  the  in- 
visible planet ;  and  other  astronomers  expressed  the  same 
desire  to  have  so  important  a  question  examined  and  set- 
tled. On  his  return  to  Berlin  from  the  meeting  of  the 
British  Association  in  1846,  the  celebrated  astronomer, 
M.  Bessel,  commenced  the  task  of  determining  the  actual 
position  of  the  planet ;  but,  in  consequence  of  the  death 
of  M.  Flemming,  the  young  German  astronomer  to  whom 
he  had  intrusted  some  of  his  preliminary  calculations,  and 
of  his  own  death  not  long  afterward,  the  inquiry  was 
stopped. 


DISCOVERY    OF    THE    PLANET    NEPTUNE.  257 

"  While  the  leading  astronomers  in  Europe  were  thus 
thinking  and  talking  about  the  possible  existence  of  a 
new  planet  beyond  the  orbit  of  Uranus,  two  young  as- 
tronomers (Mr.  Adams,  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  M.  Leverrier,  of  Paris)  were  diligently  engaged  in 
attempting  to  deduce  from  the  irregularities  which  it 
produced  in  the  motions  of  Uranus  the  elements  of  the 
planet's  orbit,  and  its  actual  position  in  the  heavens.  In 
October,  1845,  Mr.  Adams  solved  this  intricate  problem 
— the  inverse  problem  of  perturbations?  as  it  has  been 
called — placing  beyond  a  doubt  the  theoretical  existence 
of  the  planet,  and  assigning  to  it  a  place  in  the  heavens 
which  was  afterward  found  to  be  little  more  than  a  sin- 
gle degree  from  its  exact  place !  Anxious  for  the  dis- 
covery of  the  planet  in  the  heavens,  Mr.  Adams  com- 
municated his  results  to  the  Astronomer  Royal  and  Pro- 
fessor Challis,  but  more  than  nine  months  were  allowed 
to  pass  away  before  a  single  telescope  was  directed  in 
search  of  it  to  the  heavens.  On  the  29th  of  July,  Pro- 
fessor Challis  began  his  observations  ;  and  on  the  4th 
and  12th  of  August,  when  he  directed  his  telescope  to 
the  theoretical  place  of  the  planet  as  given  him  by  Mr. 
Adams,  lie  saw  the  planet,  and  obtained  two  positions 
of  it. 

"  While  Mr.  Adams  was  engaged  in  this  important  in- 
quiry, M.  Leverrier — who  had  distinguished  himself  by  a 
series  of  valuable  memoirs  on  the  great  inequality  of  Pal- 
las, on  the  perturbations  of  Mercury,  and  on  the  rectifi- 
cations of  the  orbits  of  comets — was  busily  occupied  with 
the  same  problem.  In  the  summer  of  1845,  M.  Arago 
represented  to  Leverrier  the  importance  of  studying  the 
perturbations  of  Uranus,  which  suggestion  he  followed ; 
and  on  November  10, 1845,  submitted  to  the  Academy 
of  Science  his  First  Memoir  on  the  Theory  of  Uranus, 
and  in  the  following  June  his  Second  Memoir,  in  which, 

*  "  The  solution  of  the  inverse  problem  of  disturbing  forces  has  led 
Leverrier  and  Adams  to  the  discovery  of  a  new  planet  merely  by  the 
deductions  from  the  manner  in  which  the  motions  of  an  old  one  are 
affected ;  and  its  orbit  has  been  so  calculated  that  observers  could  find 
it — nay,  its  disk,  as  measured  by  them,  only  varies  l-1200th  of  a  de- 
gree from  the  amount  given  by  the  theory." — Lord  Brougham's  In- 
augural Address  on  the  erection  of  a  Statue  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  at 
Grant  ham,  1858. 


258  DISCOVERY    OF   THE   PLANET   NEPTUNE. 

after  examining  the  different  hypotheses  that  had  been 
adduced  to  explain  the  irregularities  of  that  planet,  he  is 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  they  are  due  to  the  action 
of  a  planet  situated  in  the  ecliptic  at  a  mean  distance 
double  that  of  Uranus.  He  then  proceeds  to  determine 
where  this  planet  is  actually  situated,  what  is  its  mass, 
and  what  are  the  elements  of  the  orbit  which  it  describes. 
After  giving  a  rigorous  solution  of  this  problem,  and 
showing  that  there  are  not  two  quarters  of  the  heavens 
in  which  we  can  place  the  planet  at  a  given  epoch,  he 
computes  its  heliocentric  place  on  the  1st  of  January, 
1847,  which  he  finds  to  be  in  the  325th  degree  of  longi- 
tude ;  and  he  boldly  asserts  that  in  assigning  to  it  this 
place,  he  does  not  commit  an  error  of  more  than  10°. 
The  position  thus  given  to  it  is  within  a  degree  of  that 
found  by  Mr.  Adams.  Anxious,  like  Mr.  Adams,  for  the 
actual  discovery  of  the  planet,  M.  Leverrier  naturally  ex- 
pected that  practical  astronomers  would  exert  themselves 
in  searching  for  it.  The  place  which  he  assigned  to  it 
was  published  on  the  1st  of  June,  and  yet  no  attempt 
seems  to  have  been  made  to  find  it  for  nearly  five  months. 
The  exact  position  of  the  planet  was  published  on  the 
31st  of  August,  and  on  the  13th  of  September  was  com- 
municated to  M.  Galle,  of  the  Koyal  Observatory  of  Ber- 
lin, who  discovered  it  as  a  star  of  the  eighth  magnitude 
the  very  evening  on  which  he  received  the  request  to 
look  for  it.  Professor  Challis  had  secured  the  discovery 
of  this  remarkable  body  six  weeks  before,  but  the  honor 
of  having  actually  found  it  belongs  to  the  Prussian  as- 
tronomer. With  the  universal  concurrence  of  the  as- 
tronomical world,  the  new  planet  received  the  name  of 
Neptune.  It  revolves  round  the  sun  in  172  years,  at  a 
mean  distance  of  thirty,  that  of  Uranus  being  nineteen, 
and  that  of  the  Earth  one ;  and  by  its  discovery  the  Solar 
System  has  been  extended  one  thousand  millions  of  miles 
beyond  its  former  limits. 

"  The  honor  of  having  made  this  discovery  (continues 
Sir  David  Brewster  most  emphatically)  belongs  equally 
to  Adams  and  Leverrier.  It  is  the  greatest  intellectual 
achievement  in  the  annals  of  astronomy,  and  the  noblest 
triumph  of  the  Newtonian  Philosophy.  To  detect  a 
planet  by  the  eyp,  or  to  track  it  to  its  place  by  the  mind, 


DISCOVERY    OF    THE    PLANET    NEPTUXE.  259 

are  acts  as  incommensurable  as  those  of  muscular  and  in- 
tellectual power.  Recumbent  on  his  easy-chair,  the 
practical  astronomer  has  but  to  look  through  the  cleft  in 
his  revolving  cupola  in  order  to  trace  the  pilgrim  star  in 
its  course,  or,  by  the  application  of  magnifying  power,  to 
expand  its  tiny  disk,  and  thus  transfer  it  from  its  sidereal 
companions  to  the  planetary  dominions.  The  physical 
astronomer,  on  the  contrary,  has  no  such  auxiliaries :  he 
calculates  at  noon,  when  the  stars  disappear  under  a 
meridian  sun ;  he  computes  at  midnight,  when  clouds 
and  darkness  shroud  the  heavens ;  and  from  within  that 
cerebral  dome,  which  has  no  opening  heavenward,  and 
no  instrument  but  the  Eye  of  Reason,  he  sees  in  the  dis- 
turbing agencies  of  an  unseen  planet,  upon  a  planet  by 
him  equally  unseen,  the  existence  of  the  disturbing  agent; 
and  from  the  nature  and  amount  of  its  action,  he  computes 
its  magnitude  and  indicates  its  place.  If  man  has  ever 
been  permitted  to  see  otherwise  than  by  the  eye,  it  is 
when  the  clairvoyance  of  reason,  piercing  through  screens 
of  epidermis  and  walls  of  bone,  grasps,  amid  the  ab- 
stractions of  number  and  of  quality,  those  sublime  re- 
alities which  have  eluded  the  keenest  touch  and  evaded 
the  sharpest  eye."* 

*  We  are  indebted  for  the  above  excellent  precis  of  this  great  dis- 
covery to  Sir  David  Brewster's  Life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  vol.  i.,  p. 
366-370. 


PALISSY  THE  POTTER. 

THE  production  of  enameled  Pottery  from  native  ma- 
terials in  France  is  strikingly  commemorated  in  the  kind 
of  ware  which  may  be  said  to  be  peculiar  to  that  country, 
and  is  known  as  Palissy  Ware.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
embellishment  mixed  up  with  the  life  of  the  inventor  of 
this  ware,  "  and  his  adventures,  real  or  imaginary,  have 
assisted  in  multiplying  the  numbers  of  those  dangerous 
books  which  ascribe  imaginary  events  to  real  characters."* 
There  is,  however,  enough  of  truth  in  the  life  of  Palissy 
to  awaken  our  sympathies,  and  excite  our  admiration  of 
his  works,  which  represent  the  most  interesting  epoch  in 
the  history  of  his  art,  while  his  personal  life  is  a  romance. 

Bernard  Palissy  was  born  at  La  Chapelle-Biron,  a  vil- 
lage in  the  old  diocese  of  Agen,  at  the  commencement 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  His  parents  were  poor,  but 
they  had  him  taught  reading  and  writing.  A  land-sur- 
veyor, who  had  come  to  Agen  to  lay  down  a  plan  of  that 
part  of  the  country,  remarked  the  boy  Bernard's  quick- 
ness, and  the  attention  with  which  he  watched  his  oper- 
ations, and  by  his  parents'  consent  took  him  away  with 
him  to  teach  him  his  business.  His  progress  in  practical 
geometry  was  so  rapid  that  he  mapped  out  districts  be- 
fore he  had  ended  his  apprenticeship.  In  the  intervals 
of  employment  he  was  much  given  to  the  study  of  the 
Italian  masters :  he  was  delighted  to  paint  images  and  de- 
signs on  glass,  and,  as  his  name  became  known,  he  was 
commissioned  to  adorn  churches  and  the  castles  of  the  no- 
bles. This  enabled  him  to  gratify  his  taste  for  traveling 
and  for  studying  natural  objects.  Nature  had  implanted 
in  him  a  love  of  the  beautiful,  which  became  his  teacher. 
Meanwhile,  he  became  acquainted  with  the  chemistry 
and  mineralogy  of  his  day,  such  as  it  was.  He  did  not, 
however,  profit  so  largely  as  he  might  have  done  by  the 
state  of  knowledge  in  his  time.  He  had  the  failing,  so 
common  with  practical  men,  of  inveighing  against  theory ; 
*  Charles  Tomlinson  ;  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  8th  edit. 


PALISSY   THE   POTTER.  261 

yet,  in  the  only  work  which  he  has  left  on  the  subject  of 
his  art,  he  is  obscure  in  the  few  practical  details  which 
he  gives,  and  has  mixed  them  up  with  theories  of  his 
own,  which  only  prove  how  much  painful  toil  and  how 
many  abortive  experiments  he  would  have  been  spared 
had  he  consulted  those  who  were  qualified  to  inform  him 
of  the  true  principles  of  physical  and  chemical  sciences 
applicable  to  his  researches.* 

In  1539  Palissy  quitted  his  native  village,  and  settled  as 
an  artist  at  Saintes,  where  he  married.  Here  his  modes 
of  obtaining  a  livelihood  became  less  profitable,  and  em- 
ployment was  often  not  to  be  had.  He  filled  up  his  time 
with  the  indulgence  of  scientific  theories,  but  felt  within 
him  the  working  of  energies  which  had  not  yet  been  call- 
ed into  full  action.  While  in  this  state  of  mind,  a  beau- 
tifully enameled  cup,  which  had  probably  been  made  at 
Faenza,  in  Italy,  fell  into  his  hands.  Struck  with  its  beau- 
ty, he  set  about  inquiring  into  its  mode  of  manufacture 
and  the  secrets  of  its  composition,  especially  the  enamel. 
He  undertook  a  course  of  experiments  on  the  subject, 
but  without  success :  he  burnt  the  clay  itself,  mixed  it 
with  various  ingredients,  covered  it  with  ever-varying 
preparations,  and  tried  them,  with  renewed  hopes,  in  the 
furnaces  of  glaziers  and  potters,  but  without  success.  He 
then  built  for  himself  a  furnace,  which  he  ultimately  de- 
molished and  rebuilt;  for  this,  he  found,  would  be  his 
main  dependence.  In  those  days,  a  man  of  genius,  which 
placed  him  greatly  in  advance  of  his  neighbors,  was  al- 
most sure  to  be  suspected  of  sorcery,  and  Palissy's  friends 
began  to  look  upon  him  with  terror ;  others  imagined 
him  to  be  a  coiner  of  false  money,  and  others  thought 
him  to  be  insane. 

The  desire  to  master  his  object  had  now  taken  such 
possession  of  Palissy,  that  for  several  years  he  devoted 
nearly  all  his  time  and  means  to  its  pursuit,  in  spite  of 
the  claims  of  his  wife  and  family,  and  the  remonstrances 
of  his  friends.  He  has  described  with  bitter  feeling  the 
conflict  in  his  own  breast  at  this  time ;  yet  he  bore  out- 
wardly a  cheerful  countenance,  and  strove  to  inspire  his 
family  with  the  confidence  he  himself  felt,  that  he  should 
one  day  place  them  in  affluence  by  his  success,  and  thus 
*  Dr.Lardner  on  "The  Potter's  Art." 


262  PALISSY   THE   TOTTER. 

overpay  them  for  all  the  privations  they  were  enduring. 
Fifteen  years  thus  passed  away.  Palissy  was  still  firm 
in  his  conviction,  yet  had  not  succeeded ;  but  nothing 
short  of  producing  enamel  in  all  its  perfection  would  sat- 
isfy him.  One  day,  when  he  thought  himself  on  the  point 
of  attaining  the  great  object  of  his  life,  a  workman,  on 
leaving  him,  demanded  the  wages  that  were  due  to  him : 
Palissy  had  no  money,  and  paid  him  with  the  few  clothes 
he  had  left.  He  had  now  to  work  alone — to  prepare  his 
colors,  and  to  heat  and  watch  the  furnace  w^hich  his  own 
hands  had  made.  Once  more  he  was  on  the  verge  of 
success :  he  placed  in  his  oven  a  vase,  on  which  his  hopes 
were  centred,  and  ran  for  wood  to  feed  the  fire :  it  was 
all  consumed.  He  stood  for  a  moment  overwhelmed 
with  despair ;  then  rushing  into  his  garden,  he  tore  up 
the  trellis-work  that  supported  his  fruit-trees,  broke  it  in 
pieces,  and  heated  his  furnace.  Up  sprang  the  flame, 
and  then  sank  into  the  deep-red  glow  which  promised 
the  realization  of  his  hopes ;  again  the  fire  was  nearly  ex- 
hausted, when  he  broke  into  pieces  his  chairs  and  tables, 
then  the  door,  next  the  window-frames,  and  at  last  the 
very  flooring  of  his  house — to  feed  the  furnace.  This  was 
Palissy's  final  effort,  and  his  triumph.  He  shouted  with 
joy  as  he  showed  his  wife  and  children  the  vase  he  had 
just  taken  out  of  the  furnace ;  it  was  bright  with  the  im- 
perishable colors  that  till  then  he  had  only  seen  in  dreams 
since  he  had  first  beheld  the  cup  of  Faenza. 

This  was  in  the  year  1550.  He  had  now  discovered 
the  composition  of  various  enamels,  and  it  was  not  long 
before  his  beautiful  works  found  their  way  into  all  parts 
of  France.  The  king,  Henri  II.,  commissioned  Palissy  to 
execute  certain  vases  and  figures  to  adorn  his  palace  gar- 
den; he  sent  for  the  potter  to  Paris,  gave  him  apart- 
ments in  the  Tuileries,  with  a  patent,  which  set  forth  that 
he  was  the  inventor  of  a  new  kind  of  pottery ;  and,  un- 
der the  patronage  of  the  king,  the  queen,  Catharine  de' 
Medici,  and  the  Constable  Montmorency,  Palissy  was 
known  at  Paris  by  no  other  name  than  that  of  Bernard 
de  Tuileries.  He  was  employed  by  the  Duke  of  Mont- 
morency to  decorate  the  Chateau  d'Ecouen ;  and  one  of 
the  finest  existing  specimens  of  Palissy  Ware  is  a  flask 
which  bears  the  Montmorency  arms. 


J 


BERNARD  PALISSY,  THE  POTTKB. 


WEDGWOOD'S  EARLY  POTTERY  AT  BURSLEM. 


PALISSY    WAKE.  265 

Palissy'sfigulines,  or  rustic  pottery,  became  the  fash- 
ion of  the*  day,  and  his  beautiful  designs  were  every 
where  admired.  The  general  style  of  this  ware  is  mark- 
ed by  quaintness  and  singularity.  While  the  forms  are 
in  general  correct  and  pure,  there  is  no  painting,  proper- 
ly so  called.  The  figures  are  given  in  colored  relief,  and 
the  enamel  is  hard  and  brilliant.  The  colors  are  usually 
bright,  and  mostly  yellows,  blues,  and  grays,  sometimes 
extending  to  green,  violet,  and  brown ;  but  no  fine  white, 
nor  any  tint  of  red.  He  is  considered  "  a  great  master 
of  the  power  and  effect  of  neutral  tints."  His  pieces  rus- 
tiques,  intended  to  adorn  the  large  sideboards,  or  dress- 
ers, of  the  dining-halls  of  the  period,  and  the  dishes  and 
plateaux  for  the  same  purpose,  and  not  for  the  table,  are 
loaded  with  figures  in  relief.  A  favorite  object  with  him 
was  also  a  flat  kind  of  basin,  representing  the  bottom  of 
the  sea,  with  fishes,  shells,  sea-weeds,  pebbles,  snakes, 
etc. ;  and  among  his  works  are  ewers  and  vases  gro- 
tesquely ornamented,  boars'  heads,  curious  salt-cellars, 
figures  of  saints,  wall  and  floor  tiles.* 

The  natural  objects  represented  on  the  pieces  of  Palis- 
sy are  remarkable  for  truth  of  form  and  color,  having 
been,  with  the  exception  of  certain  leaves,  moulded  from 
nature.  He  was  more  or  less  a  naturalist :  his  shells  are 
all  tertiary  fossil  shells  from  the  Paris  basin ;  the  fishes 
are  those  of  the  Seine ;  and  the  reptiles,  a  prevailing  sub- 
ject, those  of  the  banks  of  the  same  river.  He  made 
use  of  no  foreign  natural  production.  He  must  be  ad- 
mired as  well  for  the  beauty  as  for  the  utility  of  his  dis- 
covery. It  was  to  him  that  France  owed  her  high  rank 
in  the  ceramic  art.  He  formed  the  first  cabinet  of 
natural  history  collected  in  France ;  and  he  lectured  on 
botany,  chemistry,  and  agriculture  before  learned  schol- 
ars. He  wrote,  though  he  knew  neither  Latin  nor  Greek, 
in  a  style  which  reminds  one  of  Montaigne.  In  his  Traite 

*  In  the  Bernal  Collection,  dispersed  in  1855,  was  an  extremely 
rare  specimen  of  Palissy  Ware — a  circular  dish  on  a  foot,  a  lizard  in 
the  centre,  and  a  very  rich  border,  twelve  and  a  half  inches  in  diam- 
eter. This  was  purchased  in  a  broken  state  at  Paris  for  twelve  francs, 
and  after  being  admirably  restored  in  England,  was  sold  to  Mr.  Ber- 
nal for  four  pounds.  At  his  sale,  this  very  fine  specimen  brought  £162. 
It  is  now  in  the  collection  of  Baron  Gustave  de  Rothschild.  Very  fine 
imitations  of  Palissy  Ware  are  made  in  Staffordshire  by  the  Mintons. 

M 


266  HEROISM    OF   PALISSY. 

de  V  Art  de  Terre,  he  tells  the  sad  story  of  his  twenty 
years'  anxiety,  labor,  and  privation  with  touching  truth- 
fulness ;  the  unparalleled  difficulties  he  encountered,  the 
sacrifices  he  made,  the  sufferings  he  endured,  and  his 
obstinate  perseverance,  amounted  to  a  sort  of  heroism. 

He  tells  us,  in  words  of  religious  truth,  the  mainspring 
of  his  hope  throughout  this  long  probation.  "  I  have 
found  nothing  better,"  he  says,  "  than  to  observe  the 
counsel  of  God,  His  edicts,  statutes,  and  ordinances ;  and 
in  regard  to  His  will,  I  have  seen  that  He  has  command- 
ed His  followers  to  eat  bread  by  the  labor  of  their  bodies, 
and  to  multiply  the  talents  which  he  has  committed  to 
them."  The  heroism  which  Palissy  showed  in  the  pur- 
suit of  his  art  he  evinced  in  his  religious  faith ;  and  on 
Sunday  mornings  he  would  assemble  four  or  five  "  sim- 
ple and  unlearned  men"  for  religious  worship,  and  exhort 
them  to  good  works.  Such  was  "  the  beginning  of  the 
Reformed  Church  of  the  town  of  Saintes."  Some  time 
after,  when  the  place  was  assailed  by  the  fierce  opponents 
of  the  Reformers,  the  workshop  of  Palissy  was  broken 
into  by  the  mob,  and  the  poor  potter  sought  shelter  in  a 
corner,  but,  being  discovered,  was  dragged  to  a  dungeon 
at  Bordeaux.  Here  he  would  have  perished  on  the 
gallows  but  that  his  country  might  thereby  lose  his  valu- 
able art. 

The  character  of  this  great  improver  of  Pottery  was 
strongly  marked,  not  only  by  patience,  perseverance,  and 
sagacity,  but  also  by  moral  firmness  and  unshaken  recti- 
tude. He  lived  in  troublous  times,  and,  being  a  consci- 
entious Protestant,  he  unhesitatingly  avowed  his  religious 
opinions,  even  in  his  discourses  on  art.  He  had  warmly 
embraced  the  principles  of  the  Reformation ;  he  was 
arrested  at  the  time  of  the  first  edict  against  Protestants, 
framed  at  Ecouen  by  Henri  II.  in  1559;  he  recovered 
his  liberty  through  the  intercession  of  the  Constable  of 
Montmorency  with  the  Queen,  and  through  the  same 
powerful  protection  Palissy  escaped  from  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew.  He,  however,  thus  escaped  un- 
scathed to  endure  greater  sufferings.  In  his  ninetieth 
year  he  was  again  accused  of  heresy,  and,  refusing  to 
renounce  his  opinions,  he  was  thrown  into  the  Bastile. 
There  he  was  visited  by  Henri  III.  "  My  good  man," 


HEEOISM    OF   PALISSY.  267 

said  the  king,  "  if  you  can  not  conform  yourself  on  the 
matter  of  religion,  I  shall  be  compelled  to  leave  you  in 
the  hands  of  my  enemies."  "  Sire,"  replied  the  venerable 
old  man,  "  I  was  already  willing  to  surrender  my  life,  and 
could  any  regret  have  accompanied  the  action,  it  must 
assuredly  have  vanished  upon  hearing  the  great  King  of 
France  say  '  I  am  compelled.'  This,  sire,  is  a  condition 
to  which  those  who  force  you  to  act  contrary  to  your 
own  good  disposition  can  never  reduce  me,  because  I  am 
prepared  for  death,  and  because  your  whole  people  have 
not  the  power  to  compel  a  single  potter  to  bend  his 
knees  before  images  which  he  has  made." 

And  so  Palissy,  to  the  eternal  disgrace  of  the  monarch 
and  the  priests,  and  of  his  country,  whose  art  he  had  so 
signally  ennobled,  was  detained  in  the  Bastile,  where  he 
died,  at  little  short  of  a  hundred  years  of  age. 

The  high  moral  firmness  and  unshaken  rectitude  of 
Bernard  Palissy  must  ever  command  the  admiration  of 
mankind.  No  example  can  be  found  of  one  to  whom 
the  folio Aving  lines  of  Horace  (translated  by  Francis)  are 
more  truly  applicable : 

"The  man,  in  conscious  virtue  bold, 
Who  dares  his  secret  purpose  hold, 
Unshaken  hears  the  crowd's  tumultuous  cries, 
And  th'  impetuous  tyrant's  angry  brow  defies." 


JOSIAH  WEDGWOOD  AND  HIS  WAKES. 

FEW  men  have  labored  so  successfully  to  refine  and 
elevate  his  art  as  Josiah  Wedgwood,  "  the  Father  of  the 
Potteries,"  and  the  first  of  a  long  succession  of  Stafford- 
shire  potters,  who  have  applied  the  highest  science  and 
the  purest  art  to  the  improvement  of  their  commercial 
enterprise. 

Wedgwood  was  born  on  the  12th  of  July,  1730,  at 
Burslem,  in  Staffordshire,  and  was  the  son  of  a  poor  pot- 
ter. His  education  was  very  limited ;  for  "  scarcely  any 
person  in  Burslem  learned  more  than  mere  reading  and 
writing  until  about  1750,  when  some  individuals  endow- 
ed the  free-school,  for  instructing  youth  to  read  the  Bi- 
ble, write  a  fair  hand,  and  know  the  primary  rules  of 
arithmetic."  Wedgwood  had  little  time  for  self-improve- 
ment, since  at  the  age  of  eleven  years  he  worked  in  his 
elder  brother's  pottery  as  thrower,  his  father  being  then 
dead.  The  small-pox,  which  left  an  incurable  lameness 
in  his  right  leg,  so  as  afterward  to  require  amputation, 
compelled  him  to  relinquish  the  potter's  wheel.  After  a 
time  he  left  Burslem  for  Stoke,  where  his  talent  for  the 
production  of  ornamental  pottery  first  developed  itself. 
He  next,  in  partnership  with  one  Wheildon,  manufac- 
tured knife-handles  in  imitation  of  agate  and  tortoise- 
shell,  melon  table-plates,  green-pickle  leaves,  and  similar 
articles.  But  Wheildon  had  little  taste  for  the  new 
branches  of  art-manufacture  for  which  Wedgwood  had 
so  great  a  predilection ;  he  therefore  returned  to  Burs- 
lem in  1759,  and  set  up  for  himself,  in  a  small  thatched 
manufactory,  where  he  continued  to  make  ornamental 
articles.  He  prospered,  and  soon  took  a  second  manu- 
factory, where  he  made  white  stone- ware ;  and  a  third, 
at  which  he  produced  the  improved  cream-colored  ware 
by  which  he  gained  so  much  celebrity.  Of  this  new 
ware  Wedgwood  presented  some  articles  to  Queen  Char- 
lotte, who  thereupon  ordered  a  complete  table-service, 
and  was  so  pleased  with  its  execution  as  to  appoint 


WEDGWOOD   WARE.  269 

Wedgwood  her  potter,  and  to  command  that  the  ware 
should  be  called  "  Queen's  Ware."  It  has  a  dense  and 
durable  substance,  covered  with  a  brilliant  glaze,  and  is 
capable  of  bearing  uninjured  sudden  alternations  of  heat 
and  cold.  It  was  from  the  first  sold  at  a  cheap  rate,  and 
the  addition  of  embellishments  very  little  enhanced  the 
cost :  first  a  colored  edge  or  painted  border  was  added 
to  the  Queen's  Ware,  and  lastly  printed  patterns,  which 
covered  the  whole  surface.  Nor  was  this  beautiful  ware 
confined  to  England ;  for  M.  Faujas  de  Saint  Fond  shows 
how  widely  the  fame  of  Wedgwood's  pottery  had  spread 
before  1792,  when,  "in  traveling  from  Paris  to  Peters- 
burg, from  Amsterdam  to  the  farthest  part  of  Sweden, 
and  from  Dunkirk  to  the  extremity  of  the  south  of 
France,  one  is  served  at  every  inn  upon  English  ware. 
Spain,  Portugal,  and  Italy  are  supplied  with  it ;  and  ves- 
sels are  loaded  with  it  for  the  East  Indies,  the  West  In- 
dies, and  the  continent  of  America."  England  is  mainly 
indebted  to  Wedgwood  for  the  extraordinary  improve- 
ment and  rapid  extension  of  this  branch  of  industry. 
Before  his  time  our  potteries  produced  only  inferior  fab- 
rics, easily  broken  or  injured,  and  totally  devoid  of  taste 
as  to  form  or  ornament. 

Wedgwood's  success  was  not  the  result  of  any  fortu- 
nate discovery,  accidentally  made,  but  was  due  to  patient 
investigation  and  unremitting  efforts.  He  called  upon  a 
higher  class  of  men  than  was  usually  employed  in  this 
manufacture  to  assist  in  his  labors,  and  in  prosecuting  his 
experiments  he  was  guided  by  sound  scientific  principles. 
In  partnership  with  Bentley  (a  descendant  of  the  cele- 
brated scholar,  Richard  Bentley),  Wedgwood  now  de- 
voted himself  to  the  higher  branches  of  his  manufacture, 
and  succeeded  in  obtaining  from  eminent  patrons  of  art 
the  loan  of  specimens  of  sculpture,  vases,  cameos,  intagl- 
ios, medallions,  and  seals,  suitable  for  imitation  by  some 
of  the  processes  he  had  introduced.  He  obtained  for 
this  purpose  valuable  sets  of  Oriental  porcelain ;  and  Sir 
William  Hamilton  lent  specimens  of  ancient  art  from 
Herculaneum,  of  which  Wedgwood's  ingenious  workmen 
produced  the  most  accurate  and  beautiful  copies.  Mean^ 
while  the  Portland  or  Barberini  Vase  was  offered  for 
sale,  and  Wedgwood,  with  the  view  of  copying  it,  en- 


270  THE   PORTLAND   VASE. 

deavored  to  purchase  it,  and  for  some  time  continued  to 
offer  an  advance  upon  each  bidding  of  the  Duchess  of 
Portland,  until  at  length,  his  motives  being  ascertained, 
he  was  offered  the  loan  of  the  vase  on  condition  of  with- 
drawing his  opposition ;  consequently,  the  duchess  became 
the  purchaser,  at  the  price  of  1800  guineas.  Wedgwood 
then  made  fifty  copies  of  the  vase,  which  he  sold  at  50 
guineas  each  :  he  is  said  to  have  paid  £400  for  the  mod- 
el, and  the  entire  cost  of  producing  the  copies  is  stated 
to  have  exceeded  the  amount  of  the  sum  received  by 
him.  Sir  Joseph  Banks  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  bore 
testimony  to  the  excellent  execution  of  these  copies, 
which  were  chased  by  a  steel  rifle,  after  the  bas-relief 
had  been  wholly  or  partially  fired. 

The  Portland  Vase  is  composed  of  two  layers  of  vitrified  paste  or 
glass,  one  white,  the  other  blue,  so  perfect  an  imitation  of  an  onyx 
cameo  that  it  was  long  regarded  as  a  natural  production.  It  was  dis- 
covered about  the  middle  of  the  tenth  century,  and  said  to  be  many 
centuries  earlier,  and  of  Greek  workmanship.  It  has  been  deposited 
in  the  British  Museum  since  1810.  It  was  exhibited  in  a  small  room 
of  the  old  Museum  buildings  until  Feb.  7,  1845,  when  it  was  wantonly 
dashed  to  pieces  by  a  fanatic ;  but  the  fragments  being  gathered  up, 
the  vase  has  been  restored  by  Mr.  Doubleday  so  beautifully  that  a 
blemish  can  scarcely  be  detected.  The  vase  is  now  kept  in  the  Medal 
Boom  at  the  Museum.  The  mode  in  which  it  was  manufactured  was 
not  known  until  it  was  broken,  and  it  is  now  considered  as  satisfactory 
proof  that  the  making  of  glass  was  carried  on  to  a  high  state  of  per- 
fection by  the  ancients.  One  of  Wedgwood's  copies  of  the  Portland 
Vase  was  sold  in  1859  for  above  200  guineas. 

Flaxman,  the  greatest  English  sculptor,  was  largely 
employed  by  Wedgwood  in  the  preparation  of  models 
for  the  beautiful  works  of  art  which  he  was  the  first,  in 
modern  times,  to  execute  in  pottery.  By  numerous  ex- 
periments upon  various  kinds  of  clay  and  coloring  sub- 
stances, he  succeeded  in  producing  the  most  delicate 
cameos,  medallions,  and  miniature  pieces  of  sculpture,  in 
a  substance  so  extremely  hard  that  they  appear  likely  to 
exceed  even  the  bronzes  of  antiquity  in  durability.  An- 
other important  discovery  made  by  him  was  that  of 
painting  on  vases  without  the  glossy  appearance  of  or- 
dinary painting  on  porcelain  or  earthenware ;  an  art 
which  was  practiced  by  the  ancient  Etruscans,  but  which 
appears  to  have  been  lost  since  the  time  of  Pliny.  The 
indestructibility  of  some  of  his  wares  rendered  them  ex- 


WEDGWOOD'S  INVENTIONS.  271 

tremely  valuable  in  the  formation  of  chemical  vessels, 
particularly  those  opposed  to  the  action  of  acids.  The 
fame  of  Wedgwood's  operations  was  such,  that  his  works 
at  Burslem,  and  subsequently  at  Etruria,  a  village  built 
by  him  near  Newcastle-under-Lyne,  and  to  which  he  re- 
moved in  1771,  became  a  point  of  attraction  to  visitors 
from  all  parts  of  Europe. 

Wedgwood's  more  beautiful  inventions  were  a  terra 
cotta,  which  could  be  made  to  resemble  porphyry,  gran- 
ite, Egyptian  pebble,  and  other  beautiful  stones  of  the 
siliceous  or  crystalline  kind  ;  a  black  porcelainous  biscuit 
called  basaltes;  a  white  and  a  cane-colored  porcelain  bis- 
cuit, smooth  and  wax-like ;  and  another  white  porcelain- 
ous biscuit,  which  receives  color  from  metallic  oxides 
like  glass  on  enamel  in  fusion.  This  property  renders  it 
applicable  to  the  production  of  cameos,  and  all  subjects 
required  to  be  shown  in  bas-relief,  as  the  ground  can  be 
made  of  any  color,  while  the  raised  figures  are  of  the 
purest  white.  Mr.  Wedgwood  likewise  invented  a  por- 
celain biscuit  nearly  as  hard  as  agate,  which  will  resist 
the  action  of  all  corrosive  substances,  and  is  consequently 
well  adapted  for  mortars  in  the  chemist's  laboratory. 

Wedgwood's  inventions  greatly  increased  the  number 
of  persons  employed  in  the  Potteries,  and  improved  them 
by  mechanical  contrivance  and  arrangement,  his  private 
manufactory  having  had,  for  thirty  years  and  upward, 
all  the  efficacy  of  a  public  work  of  experiment.  In  1785, 
Wedgwood  stated  in  evidence  before  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons  that  from  15,000  to  20,000  persons 
were  then  employed  in  the  Potteries,  with  much  greater 
numbers  in  digging  coals  for  them,  and,  in  various  parts 
of  England  and  Ireland,  in  digging  flints  and  clay  for  the 
earthenware  manufacture,  50,000  or  60,000  tons  of  those 
materials  being  annually  conveyed  to  Staffordshire  by 
coasting  and  inland  navigation. 

In  addition  to  the  attention  displayed  by  Wedgwood 
on  the  manufacture  inseparably  connected  with  his  name, 
he  displayed  great  public  spirit  in  the  encouragement  of 
various  useful  schemes.  By  his  exertions,  and  the  en- 
gineering skill  of  Brindley,  was  completed  the  Trent  and 
Mersey  Canal,  by  which  water  communication  was  estab- 
lished between  the  Pottery  district  of  Staffordshire  and 


272 

the  coasts  of  Devonshire,  Dorsetshire,  and  Kent,  whence 
some  of  the  materials  of  the  manufacture  are  derived. 
Wedgwood  also  planned  and  carried  into  execution  a 
turnpike  road  ten  miles  in  length  through  the  Potteries. 
He  was  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  and  of  the  Society 
of  Antiquities ;  he  also  invented  a  pyrometer,  which,  as  a 
measure  of  expansion  by  heat,  has  not  been  surpassed. 
He  made  the  most  liberal  use  of  his  ample  fortune.  He 
died  at  Etruria  in  1795,  in  his  sixty-fifth  year ;  and,  al- 
though he  had  so  largely  contributed  to  the  prosperity 
of  his  countrymen,  it  was  not  until  more  than  sixty,  years 
after  his  decease  that  any  fitting  memorial  of  this  eminent 
public  benefactor  was  decided  on.  In  1859  it  was  re- 
solved to  erect  at  Stoke  a  statue  of  the  great  potter, 
holding  in  his  hand  the  Portland  Vase. 

Wedgwood  had  many  English  imitators :  he  has  even 
been  imitated  abroad,  especially  at  Sevres,  Dreffaen,  and 
Vienna. 


JAMES  WATT  AND  THE  STEAM-ENGINE. 

BEFORE  we  attempt  an  outline  of  the  great  discoveries 
of  this  scientific  benefactor,  it  may  be  interesting  to 
'  glance  at  the  earliest  employment  of  the  mighty  power 
of  Steam,  which  carries  us  back  to  a  remote  classic  age. 
It  appears  that  the  ascending  vapor  of  fluids,  as  well  as 
their  downward  tendency,  was  summoned  by  the  ancients 
to  the  aid  of  superstition.  Anthemius  of  Tralles,  the 
architect  of  Justinian,  being  desirous  to  annoy  the  orator 
Zeno,  his  neighbor  and  his  enemy,  conducted  steam  in 
leather  tribes  from  concealed  boilers,  and  made  them  pass 
through  the  partition-wall  to  beneath  the  beams  which 
supported  the  ceilings  of  Zeno's  house.  When  the  cal- 
drons were  made  to  boil,  the  ceilings  shook  as  if  they 
had  been  shaken  by  an  earthquake. 

Another  example  of  the  application  of  steam  to  the 
purposes  of  imposture  is  given  by  Tollius.  History  in- 
forms us  that  on  the  banks  of  the  Weser,  Busteric,  the 
god  of  the  ancient  Teutons,  sometimes  exhibited  his  dis- 
pleasure by  a  clap  of  thunder,  which  was  succeeded  by  a 
cloud  that  filled  the  sacred  precincts.  The  image  of  the 
god  was  made  of  metal,  and  the  head,  which  was  hollow, 
contained  an  amphora  (nine  English  gallons)  of  water. 
Wedges  of  wood  shut  up  the  apertures  at  the  mouth  and 
eyes :  while  burning  coals,  artfully  placed  in  a  cavity  of 
the  head,  gradually  heated  the  liquid.  In  a  short  time 
the  generated  steam  forced  out  the  wedges  with  a  loud 
noise,  and  then  escaped  in  three  jets,  raising  a  thick  cloud 
between  the  god  and  his  astonished  worshipers.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  the  monks  availed  themselves  of  this  inven- 
tion, and  the  steam  bust  was  put  in  requisition  even  be- 
fore Christian  worshipers. 

The  entry  among  the  manuscripts  of  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  of  the  Architonnere  of  Archimedes,  or  the  appa- 
ratus of  a  steam-gun,  has  been  already  noticed,  in  the 
sketch  of  the  Discoveries  of  Leonardo,  at  page  131. 

'  JC     O 

M  2 


274  THE 


or  Ball  of  ^Eolus,  was  another  ancient 
application  of  steam.  It  consisted  of  a  hollow  globe  of 
metal,  with  a  long  neck,  terminating  with  a  very  small 
orifice,  which,  being  filled  with  water,  and  placed  on  a 
fire,  exhibited  the  steam,  as  it  was  generated  by  the 
heat,  rushing  apparently  with  great  force  through  the 
narrow  opening.  A  common  tea-kettle  is,  in  fact,  a  sort 
of  ^Eolopile.  The  ancients  applied  the  current  of  steam, 
as  it  issued  from  the  spout,  to  propel  the  vanes  of  a  mill, 
or,  by  acting  immediately  upon  the  air,  to  generate  a 
movement  opposite  to  its  own  direction. 

The  Staffordshire  Jack  of  Hilton,  in  1680,  was  a  small 
steam-boiler  under  the  following  guise:  it  was  a  little 
hollow  image  of  brass,  of  about  twelve  inches  high, 
kneeling  upon  the  left  knee,  and  holding  the  right  hand 
upon  the  head,  having  a  little  hole  in  the  place  of  the 
mouth  about  the  bigness  of  a  great  pin's  ffead,  and 
another  in  the  back  about  two  thirds  of  an  inch  in  diam- 
eter: at  this  last  hole  it  was  filled  with  water  (about 
four  pints  and  a  quarter),  which,  when  set  to  a  strong 
fire,  evaporated  after  the  same  manner  as  an  JEolopile, 
and  vented  itself  at  the  smaller  hole  in  the  mouth. 

Father  Verbiest,  in  his  Astronomia  Europcea,  1680, 
gives  a  curious  account  of  some  experiments  that  he 
made  at  Pekin.  He  placed  an  .^Eolopile  upon  a  car,  and 
directed  the  steam  generated  within  it  upon  a  wheel  to 
which  four  wings  were  attached  ;  the  motion  thus  pro- 
duced was  communicated  by  gearing  to  the  wheel  of  the 
car.  The  machine  continued  to  move  with  great  veloci- 
ty as  long  as  the  steam  lasted,  and  by  means  of  a  kind 
of  helm  it  could  be  turned  in  various  directions.  An  ex- 
periment was  made  with  the  same  instrument  applied  to 
a  small  ship,  and  with  no  less  success. 

These  facts  belong  to  the  curiosities  of  the  subject. 
In  tracing  the  practical  history  of  the  Steam-engine 
through  some  of  its  earlier  modifications,  we  shall  find 
that,  although  the  present  form  of  this  stupendous  ma- 
chine almost  deserves  the  title  of  an  invention,  yet  many 
steps  had  been  taken,  and  much  labor  and  much  ingenu- 
ity expended,  before  it  was  brought  to  that  point  from 
which  the  more  modern  improvements  may  be  said  to 
have  begun. 


MACHINE    OF   BLASCO    DE   GAEAY.  275 

The  first  apparatus  of  this  description  of  which  any 
authentic  account  has  been  preserved  was  suggested  by 
Hero  the  elder,  who  lived  at  Alexandria  about  B.C.  100. 
It  consisted  of  a  vessel  in  which  steam  was  generated 
by  the  application  of  external  heat.  A  ball  was  supplied 
with  the  elastic  vapor  thus  procured  by  means  of  a  bent 
pipe,  a  steam-tight  joint  being  provided  for  that  purpose. 
Two  tubes,  bent  to  a  right  angle,  are  the  only  parts  open 
to  the  air,  and  as  the  steam  rushes  out  from  very  minute 
apertures,  a  rotatory  motion  is  produced.  A  description 
of  this  apparatus  is  preserved  in  Hero's  Spiritalia,  pub- 
lished by  the  Jesuits  in  1693 ;  and  an  excellent  account 
of  Hero's  inventions  has  been  published  by  Mr.  Bennet 
Woodcroft. 

The  next  attempt  was  the  experiment  made  in  1543 
by  Blasco  de  Garay,  a  sea-captain,  to  propel  vessels  by  a 
machine*having  the  appearance  of  a  steam-engine.  This 
experiment  was  made  before  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  in 
the  port  of  Barcelona,  in  the  Trinity,  200  tons  burden. 
All  that  could  be  discovered  during  the  trial  wras  that 
the  machinery  consisted  of  a  large  boiler  containing  wa- 
ter, and  that  wheels  were  attached  to  each  side  of  the 
vessel,  by  the  revolution  of  which  it  was  propelled.  Aft- 
er the  experiment  Garay  took  away  all  the  machinery, 
leaving  only  the  framing  of  wood  in  the  arsenals  of  Bar- 
celona.  As  a  boiler  was  used,  it  is  probable,  though  not 
certain,  that  steam  was  the  agent.  It  is  most  likely  that 
the  contrivance  of  Garay  was  identical  with  that  of  Hero. 
The  experiment  succeeded,  Garay  was  rewarded,  and  the 
usefulness  of  the  contrivance  in  towing  ships  out  of  port 
was  admitted,  yet  it  does  not  appear  that  a  second  ex- 
periment was  ever  made,  much  less  that  the  machine  was 
brought  into  practical  use.  Mr.  Macgregor  impugns  this 
report,*  and  states,  as  the  result  of  his  inquiries  in  Spain, 
that  if  Blasco  de  Garay  used  a  steam-engine  to  propel  a 
vessel,  the  evidence  of  the  fact  is  not  afforded  by  his  two 
letters  at  Simancas,  and  is  not  produced,  if  it  is  known 
there  or  at  Barcelona,  by  the  public  officers  and  others 
interested  in  supporting  such  a  claim. 

Seventeen  years  later,  in  1615,  Solomon  de  Caus,  who 
had  been  engineer  and  architect  to  Louis  XIII.,  King  of 
*  In  a  Paper  read  to  the  Society  of  Arts,  April  14,  1858. 


276  STEAM-MACHINE    OF   BKANCAS. 

France,  published  a  work,  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  great 
violence  "  when  water  exhales  in  air  by  means  of  fire,  and 
the  said  air  is  inclosed ;  as,  for  example,  take  a  ball  of 
copper  of  one  or  two  feet  diameter,  and  one  inch  thick, 
which  being  filled  with  water  by  a  small  hole,  which 
shall  be  strongly  stopped  with  a  peg,  so  that  neither  air 
nor  water  can  escape,  it  is  certain  that,  if  we  put  the  said 
ball  upon  a  great  fire,  so  that  it  will  become  very  hot,  it 
will  cause  a  compression  so  violent  that  the  ball  will  burst 
in  pieces  with  a  noise  like  a  petard."  This  effect  is  due 
more  to  the  high-pressure  steam  raised  from  the  water 
than  to  the  pressure  of  the  heated  air  contained  in  the 
ball.  It  is,  however,  evident  that  De  Caus  ascribed  the 
force  entirely  to  the  air,  and  not  to  the  agency  of  steam, 
which  he  never  mentions ;  wherefore  he  can  not  be  con- 
sidered to  have  had  a  share  in  the  invention  of  the  steam- 
engine. 

Next  is  Brancas's  Revolving  Apparatus,  which  was 
still  more  simple  than  that  contrived  by  Hero.  A  cop- 
per vessel,  filled  with  water  (in  the  original  figure  made 
in  the  form  of  an  ornamental  head),  was  furnished  with  a 
pipe,  through  which  the  steam  was  propelled ;  and  strik- 
ing against  the  vanes  of  a  float,  readily  gave  motion  to 
pestles  and  mortars  for  pounding  materials  to  make  gun- 
powder, and  rolling-stones  for  grinding  the  same;  ma- 
chines for  raising  water  by  buckets,  for  sawing  timber, 
for  driving  piles,  etc.  No  very  considerable  force  could 
have  been  obtained  from  this  simple  apparatus,  as  the 
steam,  passing  through  the  atmosphere  in  its  passage  to 
the  wheel,  must,  to  a  certain  extent  at  least,  be  converted 
into  water ;  and  the  method  has  no  analogy  to  any  appli- 
cation of  steam  in  modern  engines. 

After  the  publication  of  the  work  by  Brancas,  more 
than  thirty  years  elapsed  ere  the  appearance  of  the  Mar- 
quis of  Worcester's  Century  of  Inventions  recalled  the 
attention  of  the  scientific  world  to  this  important  sub- 
ject. His  Hydraulic  Machine  is  described  at  p.  161-168. 
It  "  raised  water  more  than  forty  geometrical  feet  by  the 
power  of  one  man  only,  and  in  a  very  short  space  of  time 
drawing  up  four  vessels  of  water  through  a  tube  or  chan- 
nel not  more  than  a  span  in  width." 

This  contrivance  was  a  great  advance  upon  that  of  De 


PAPIN'S  IMPROVEMENTS.  277 

Caus ;  for,  allowing  that  he  knew  the  physical  agent  by 
which  the  water  was  driven  upward  in  his  apparatus, 
still  it  was  only  a  method  of  causing  a  vessel  of  boiling 
water  to  empty  itself;  and,  before  a  repetition  of  the 
process  could  be  made,  the  vessel  should  be  refilled,  and 
again  boiled.  In  the  machine  of  Lord  Worcester,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  agency  of  the  steam  was  employed 
in  the  same  manner  as  it  is  in  the  steam-engine  of  the 
present  day,  being  generated  in  one  vessel,  and  used  for 
mechanical  purposes  in  another.  Upon  this  distinction 
depends  the  whole  practicability  of  using  steam  as  a 
mechanical  agent.  Had  its  action  been  confined  to  the 
vessel  in  which  it  was  produced,  it  never  could  have  been 
usefully  employed. 

Sir  Samuel  Morland's  "  Principles  of  the  New  Force 
of  Fire"  has  been  noticed  at  page  159,  but  he  does  not 
indicate  the  form  of  the  machine  by  which  he  proposed 
to  render  the  force  of  steam  a  useful  mover.  It  is,  how- 
ever, remarkable,  that  at  this  early  period,  before  experi- 
ments had  been  made  on  the  expansion  which  water  un- 
dergoes in  evaporation,  Morland  should  have  given  so 
near  an  approximation  to  the  actual  amount  of  that  ex- 
pansion. It  can  scarcely  be  supposed  that  such  an  esti- 
mate could  be  obtained  by  him  otherwise  than  by  exper- 
iments. 

To  Denis  Papin,  a  native  of  Blois,  is  due  the  discovery, 
in  1688,  of  one  of  the  qualities  of  steam,  to  the  proper 
management  of  which  is  owing  much  of  the  efficacy  of 
the  modern  steam-engine.  He  conceived  the  idea  of 
producing  a  moving  power  by  means  of  a  piston  working 
in  a  cylinder,  as  in  the  motion  of  pumps ;  and  he  first 
proposed  to  produce  the  vacuum  under  the  piston  by 
means  of  common  air-pumps  worked  by  a  water-wheel. 
This,  however,  would  but  amount  to  a  mere  transfer  of 
power ;  but  he  subsequently  produced  the  vacuum  in 
another  way.  He  constructed  a  small  model  cylinder, 
in  which  was  placed  a  solid  piston;  and  in  the  bottom 
of  the  cylinder,  under  the  piston,  was  contained  a  small 
quantity  of  water,  which  being  heated  by  fire,  steam  was 
produced,  the  elastic  force  of  which  raised  the  piston  to 
the  top  of  the  cylinder :  the  fire  being  then  removed,  and 
the  cylinder  being  cooled  by  the  surrounding  air,  the 


278  PAPIN'S  IMPROVEMENTS. 

steam  was  condensed  and  reconverted  into  water,  leav- 
ing a  vacuum  in  the  cylinder,  into  which  the  piston  was 
pressed  by  the  force  of  the  atmosphere.  The  fire  being 
applied  and  subsequently  removed,  another  ascent  and 
descent  was  accomplished,  and  in  the  same  manner  the 
alternate  motion  of  the  piston  was  continued. 

Nevertheless,  Arago  gives  the  invention  of  the  steam- 
engine  to  Papin,  who  certainly  imagined  the  formation 
of  a  vacuum  by  cooling  the  steam ;  and  also  heated  the 
steam,  and  when  he  wanted  it  to  cool,  took  away  the  fire. 
Papin  did  not,  however,  make  any  machine  at  all,  al- 
though Arago  thus  speaks  of  it : 

The  machine,  in  which  our  countryman  was  the  first  to  combine 
the  elastic  force  of  steam  with  the  property  possessed  by  this  vapor  of 
annihilating  itself  by  cooling,  he  never  made  on  a  large  scale :  his 
experiments  were  always  made  with  simple  models.  The  water  in- 
tended to  generate  the  steam  was  not  even  contained  in  a  separate 
vessel;  inclosed  in  the  cylinder,  it  rested  on  the  metal  plate  that 
closed  the  orifice  at  the  bottom.  It  was  this  plate  that  Papin  heated 
directly,  to  transform  the  water  into  steam;  it  wras  from  the  same 
plate  that  he  took  away  the  fire  when  he  wished  for  condensation  to 
be  effected.  Such  a  proceeding,  barely  allowable  in  an  experiment 
intended  to  verify  the  correctness  of  a  principle,  would  evidently  be 
still  less  admissible  if  the  piston  were  required  to  move  with  some 
celerity.  Papin,  while  saying  that  success  might  be  attained  "by 
various  constructions  easy  to  imagine,"  does  not  indicate  any  of  them. 
He  leaves  to  his  successors  both  the  merit  of  applying  his  fruitful  idea, 
and  that  of  inventing  the  details  which  alone  could  insure  the  success 
of  the  machine. 

None  of  the  several  inventions  hitherto  noticed  appear 
to  have  advanced  beyond  experimental  models.  About 
the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Captain  Thomas 
Savery  proposed  to  combine  the  machine  described  by 
the  Marquis  of  Worcester  with  an  apparatus  for  raising 
water  by  suction  into  a  vacuum  produced  by  the  con- 
densation of  steam.  Savery  appears  to  have  been  un- 
aware of  Papin's  invention,  and  states  that  his  discovery 
of  the  condensing  principle  arose  as  follows.  Having 
drunk  a  flask  of  Florence  wine  at  a  tavern,  and  flung  the 
empty  flask  on  the  fire,  he  called  for  a  basin  of  water  to 
wash  his  hands.  A  small  quantity  which  remained  in 
the  flask  began  to  boil,  and  steam  issued  from  its  mouth. 
He  then  put  on  a  thick  glove,  seized  the  flask,  and 
plunged  its  mouth  in  the  cold  water,  which  immediately 
rushed  up  into  the  flask  and  filled  it. 


279 

According  to  another  version  of  the  story,  it  was  the 
accidental  circumstance  of  Savery's  immersing  a  heated 
tobacco-pipe  in  water,  and  perceiving  the  water  imme- 
diately rush  up  the  tube  on  the  concentration  by  the  cold 
of  the  warm  and  thin  air,  that  first  suggested  to  the  cap- 
tain the  important  use  that  might  be  made  of  steam,  or 
any  other  gas  expanded  by  heat,  as  a  means  of  creating 
a  vacuum. 

This  circumstance  immediately  suggested  to  Savery 
the  possibility  of  giving  effect  to  the  atmospheric  press- 
ure by  creating  a  vacuum,  first  by  exhausting  the  barrel 
of  a  pump  by  filling  it  with  steam,  and  then  condensing 
the  same  steam,  when  the  atmospheric  pressure  would 
force  the  water  from  the  well  into  the  pump-barrel,  pro- 
vided it  were  not  more  than  thirty-four  feet  above  the 
water  in  the  well.  He  perceived  also  that,  having  lifted 
the  water  to  this  height,  he  might  use  the  elastic  force 
of  steam,  in  the  manner  described  by  the  Marquis  of 
Worcester,  to  raise  the  same  water  to  a  still  greater  ele- 
vation;  and  that  the  same  steam  which  accomplished 
this  mechanical  effort  would  serve,  by  its  subsequent 
condensation,  to  reproduce  the  vacuum  and  draw  up 
more  water.  "  It  was  on  this  principle,"  says  Lardner, 
"  that  Savery  constructed  the  first  engine  in  which  steam 
was  ever  brought  into  practical  operation."  He  "  enter- 
tained" the  Royal  Society  with  showing  them  his  engine, 
for  the  success  of  which  they  gave  him  a  certificate. 
The  engine  is  thus  referred  to  in  Koitzer's  System  of 
Hydrostatics  in  1729:  "The  first  time  a  steam-engine 
played  was  in  a  potter's  house  at  Lambeth,  where,  though 
it  was  a  small  engine,  yet  it  (the  water)  forced  its  way 
through  the  roof  and  struck  up  the  tiles  in  a  manner 
that  surprised  all  the  spectators." 

Captairf  Thorn  as  Savery  was  descended  from  an  old  family  in  South 
Devon,  where  he  was  born  about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Mechanics  appear  to  have  been  his  favorite  study,  and  as  he 
pursued  them  practically,  he  was  able  to  form  a  body  of  workmen  to 
execute  his  various  plans.  He  had  a  patent  for  his  steam-engine  in 
1698,  and  the  exclusive  privilege  of  constructing  it  was  confirmed  to 
him  in  1 699  by  Act  of  Parliament.  Desaguliers  has  unjustly  accused 
him  of  having  derived  his  plans  from  the  Marquis  of  Worcester ;  but 
all  writers  have  acknowledged  that  he  was  the  first  who  ever  con- 
structed an  engine  of  this  kind  which  possessed  any  great  and  prac- 


280  PAPIN'S  DIGESTER. 

tical  utility ;  and  it  must  be  stated,  that  the  experiments,  in  1690,  of 
Papin  (to  whom  it  has  been  attempted  to  transfer  the  honor  of  the 
invention)  were  not  productive  of  any  useful  results  till  followed  out 
in  England  in  the  beginning  of  the  following  century.  It  is  of  no 
consequence  whether  Savery  was  or  was  not  acquainted  with  these 
experiments,  for  he  worked  on  essentially  different  principles.  His 
moving  power  was  the  elasticity  of  steam,  to  which  our  engineers 
have  again  returned  since  Watt  demonstrated  the  great  advantage  of 
it ;  whereas  Papin  used  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere  (which  can 
never  exceed  a  few  pounds  on  the  square  inch  of  the  piston),  and 
steam  was  only  a  subordinate  agent  by  which  he  procured  a  vacuum. 
The  arrangement  also  of  the  different  parts  of  Savory's  engine,  and 
particularly  the  means  he  used  for  condensing  the  steam,  are  all  his 
own,  and  mark  him  for  a  man  of  truly  inventive  genius.  It  is  said 
that  Savery  joined  in  a  patent  with  Newcomen  and  Cawley  for  the 
atmospheric  engine ;  but  this  appears  to  be  a  mistake,  since  no  traces 
of  such  an  instrument  have  been  found  at  the  Rolls  Office.  He  took 
out  a  patent,  however,  in  1686,  for  polishing  plate  glass  and  for  row- 
ing vessels  with  paddle-wheels,  and,  in  1706,  for  a  double  bellows  to 
produce  a  continuous  blast.  He  published  in  1698  Navigation  Im- 
proved;  in  1702,  The  Miner's  Friend;  and  in  1705,  a  translation,  in 
folio,  of  Cohorn's  Fortification.  This  last  was  dedicated  to  George, 
Prince  of  Denmark,  to  whom  he  was  indebted,  that  same  year,  for 
the  office  of  treasurer  to  the  sick  and  wounded.  Savery  is  understood 
to  have  accumulated  a  considerable  fortune.  He  died  in  1715. — 
PROF.  RIGAUD,  F.B.S. 

About  1717,  the  Safety-valve,  which  had  been  invented 
about  1681  by  Papin  for  his  Digester,  was  applied  to 
Savery's  engines  by  Desaguliers. 

Papin,  while  making  experiments  for  Boyle,  discovered  that  if  va- 
por be  prevented  from  rising,  the  water  becomes  hotter  than  the  usual 
boiling-point.  This  led  to  the  invention  of  his  "Bone  Digester," 
which  he  presented  to  the  Royal  Society,  with  a  letter  describing  its 
uses  for  softening  bones,  and  for  "cookery,  voyages  at  sea,  confection- 
ery, making  of  drinks,  chemistry,  and  dyeing."  Charles  II.  com- 
manded Papin  to  make  a  Digester  for  his  laboratory  at  Whitehall, 
and  the  invention  excited  great  interest.  It  was  exhibited  in  opera- 
tion once  a  week,  in  Water  Lane,  Blackfriars,  in  a  house  "  over  against 
the  Blue  Boot,"  where  the  people  crowded  in  such  numbers  that  only 
those  were  admitted  who  brought  with  them  recommendations  from 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society.  In  1684,  when  Papin  was  appointed 
temporary  curator  by  the  Royal  Society,  he  invited  certain  Fellows  to 
a  supper  prepared  by  his  Digesters.  John  Evelyn  was  a  guest ;  and 
he  tells  us  how  the  hardest  beef  and  mutton  bones  were  made  by  the 
Digester  as  soft  as  cheese,  without  water  or  other  liquor,  and  with  less 
than  eight  ounces  of  coal,  producing  "  an  incredible  quantity  of 
gravy,"  and  delicious  jelly  from  the  beef-bones.  The  guests  also  ate 
pike  and  other  fish  bones  "without  impediment,"  and  pigeons  "  stew- 
ed in  their  own  juice  ;"  in  such  case  the  natural  juice  reducing  "  the 
hardest  bones  to  tenderness."  Evelyn  sent  a  glass  of  the  jelly  to  his 


281 

wife,  "to  the  reproach  of  all  that  the  ladies  ever  made  of  the  best 
hartshorn. " 

The  enormous  strength  required  for  Papin's  Digester,  and  the  means 
to  which  he  was  obliged  to  resort  for  confining  the  covers,  must  have 
early  shown  him  what  a  powerful  agent  he  was  using.  Subsequently 
he  adapted  the  piston  of  the  common  sucking-pump  to  a  steam-ma- 
chine, making  it  work  in  the  cylinder,  and  applying  steam  as  the  agent 
to  raise  it.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  that  although  Papin  invented  the 
safety-valve,  he  did  not  apply  it  to  his  steam-machine. 

About  the  year  1711,  Thomas  Newcomen,  an  iron- 
monger, and  John  Cawley,  a  glazier,  both  of  Dartmouth, 
Devon,  in  visiting  the  tin  mines  of  Cornwall,  saw  Savery's 
engine  at  work,  and  detected  the  causes  which  led  to  its 
inefficiency  for  drainage.  This  Newcomen  proposed  to 
remedy  by  his  atmospheric  engine,  in  which  he  intended 
to  work  the  mining  pumps  by  connecting  the  end  of  the 
pump-rod  by  a  chain  with  the  arch-head  of  a  working 
beam  playing  on  an  axis,  the  other  arch-head  of  the  beam 
being  connected  by  a  chain  with  the  rod  of  a  solid  pis- 
ton moving  air-tight  in  a  cylinder.  If  a  vacuum  be  cre- 
ated beneath  the  piston,  the  atmosphere  will  press  it 
down  with  a  force  of  fifteen  feet  per  square  inch,  and  the 
end  of  the  beam  being  thus  raised,  the  pump-rod  will  be 
drawn  up.  If  an  equivalent  pressure  be  introduced  be- 
low the  piston,  it  will  neither  rise  nor  fall ;  and  if,  in  this 
case,  the  pump-rod  be  made  heavier  than  the  piston  and 
its  rod,  so  as  to  overcome  the  friction,  it  will  descend  and 
elevate  the  piston  again  to  the  top  of  the  cylinder,  and 
so  the  process  may  be  continued. 

The  power  of  such  a  machine  would  depend  entirely 
on  the  magnitude  of  the  piston,  the  vacuum  and  the 
counterpoise  being  effected  by  the  alternate  introduction 
and  condensation  of  the  steam.  We  have  only  space  for 
this  general  description  of  Newcomen's  engine.  It  was 
worked  by  the  alternate  opening  and  closing  of  two 
valves,  the  regulating  and  condensing.  When  the  piston 
reached  the  top  of  the  cylinder,  the  former  was  to  be 
closed  and  the  latter  opened ;  and  on  reaching  the  bot- 
tom, the  former  was  to  be  opened  and  the  latter  closed. 

It  has  been  said  that  we  are  indebted  for  the  import- 
ant invention  in  this  engine  termed  "Hand-gear,"  by 
which  its  valves  or  cocks  are  worked  by  the  machine  it- 
self, to  an  idle  boy  named  Humphrey  Potter,  who,  being 


282  BIETH    OF   JAMES    WATT. 

employed  to  stop  and  open  a  valve,  saw  that  he  could 
save  himself  the  trouble  of  attending  and  watching  it  by 
fixing  a  plug  upon  a  part  of  the  machine  which  came  to 
the  place  at  the  proper  times,  in  consequence  of  the  gen- 
eral movement.  If  this  anecdote  be  true,  what  does  it 
prove  ?  That  Humphrey  Potter  might  be  very  idle,  but 
that  he  was,  at  the  same  time,  very  ingenious.  It  was  a 
contrivance,  not  the  result  of  accident,  but  of  acute  ob- 
servation and  successful  experiment. 

Although  we  find  in  Newcomen's  engine  no  new  prin- 
ciple, its  mechanism  and  combinations  were  very  import- 
ant. The  method  of  condensing  the  steam  by  the  sud- 
den injection  of  water,  and  of  expelling  the  air  and  water 
from  the  cylinder  by  the  injection  of  steam,  are  two  proc- 
esses which  are  still  necessary  to  the  operation  of  the  im- 
proved Steam-engine,  and  appear  to  be  wholly  due  to  the 
inventors  of  the  Atmospheric  Engine.  After  Mr.  Beigh- 
ton  had,  about  1718,  made  this  machine  itself  shut  and 
open  the  cocks  for  regulating  the  supplies  of  steam  and 
water,  for  half  a  century  no  farther  important  progress 
was  made,  until  Mr.  Watt  applied  his  vast  genius  to  the 
adaptation  of  steam-power  to  the  uses  of  life.  The  ear- 
lier steam-engines  may  be  regarded  as  steam-pumps,  and 
that  of  Newcomen  the  connecting  link  between  the  steam- 
pump  and  the  modern  engine,  of  which  it  contained  the 
germ. 

We  have  now  to  hail  the  appearance  of  the  great  im- 
prover of  the  Steam-engine. 

JAMES  WATT  was  born  at  Greenock  on  the  19th  of 
January,  1736.  He  was  the  fourth  child  in  a  family 
which  for  a  hundred  years  had  more  or  less  professed 
mathematics  and  navigation.  His  constitution  was  del- 
icate, and  his  mental  powers  were  precocious.  He  was 
distinguished  from  an  early  age  by  his  candor  and  truth- 
fulness ;  and  his  father,  to  ascertain  the  cause  of  any  of 
his  boyish  quarrels,  used  to  say, "  Let  James  speak ;  from 
him  I  always  hear  truth."  James  also  showed  his  con- 
structive tastes  equally  early,  experimenting  on  his  play- 
things with  a  set  of  small  carpenter's  tools  which  his  fa- 
ther had  given  him.  At  six  he  was  still  at  home.  "  Mr. 
Watt,"  said  a  friend  to  the  father,  u  you  ought  to  send 
that  boy  to  school,  and  not  let  him  trifle  away  his  time 


HIS   EAKLY   BENT   TOWAKD   PHYSICAL   SCIENCE.     283 

at  home."  "  Look  what  he  is  doing  before  you  condemn 
him,"  was  the  reply.  The  visitor  then  observed  the  child 
had  drawn  mathematical  lines  and  figures  on  the  hearth, 
and  was  engaged  in  a  process  of  calculation.  On  put- 
ting questions  to  him,  he  was  astonished  at  his  quickness 
and  simplicity.  "  Forgive  me,"  said  he,  "  this  child's  edu- 
cation has  not  been  neglected ;  this  is  no  common  child." 

Watt's  cousin,  Mrs.  Marian  Campbell,  describes  his  in- 
ventive capacity  as  a  story-teller,  and  details  an  incident 
of  his  occupying  himself  with  the  steam  of  a  tea-kettle, 
and  by  means  of  a  cup  and  a  spoon  making  an  early  ex- 
periment in  the  condensation  of  steam.  To  this  incident 
she  probably  attached  more  importance  than  was  its  due 
from  reverting  to  it  when  illustrated  by  her  after-recol- 
lections. Out  of  this  story,  reliable  or  not  in  the  sense 
ascribed  to  it,  M.  Arago  obtained  an  oratorical  point  for 
an  eloge  which  he  delivered  to  the  French  Institute. 
Watt  may  or  may  not  have  been  occupied  as  a  boy  with 
the  study  of  the  condensation  of  steam  while  he  was  play- 
ing with  the  kettle.  The  story  suggests  a  possibility, 
nothing  more ;  though  it  has  been  made  the  foundation 
of  a  grave  announcement,  the  subject  of  a  pretty  picture, 
and  will  ever  remain  a  basis  for  suggestive  speculation. 

Watt  was  sent  to  a  commercial  school,  where  he  was 
provided  with  a  fair  outfit  of  Latin  and  with  some  ele- 
ments of  Greek ;  but  mathematics  he  studied  with  great- 
er zest,  and  with  proportionate  success.  By  the  time  he 
was  fifteen  he  had  read  twice,  with  great  attention,  S. 
Gravesande's  Elements  of  Natural  Philosophy ;  and 
"  while  under  his  father's  roof  he  went  on  with  various 
chemical  experiments,  repeating  them  again  and  again, 
until  satisfied  of  their  accuracy  from  his  own  observa- 
tions." He  even  made  himself  a  small  electrical  machine 
about  1750-53 ;  no  mean  performance  at  that  date,  since, 
according  to  Priestley's  History  of  Electricity,  the  Ley- 
den  phial  itself  was  not  invented  until  the  years  1745-6. 

His  pastime  lay  chiefly  in  his  father's  marine  store, 
among  the  sails  and  ropes,  the  blocks  and  tackle,  or  by 
the  old  gray  gateway  of  the  Mansion  House  on  the  hill 
above  Greenock,  where  he  would  loiter  away  hours  by 
day,  and  at  night  lie  down  on  his  back  and  watch  the 
stars  through  the  trees. 


284  WATT  ARRIVES   IN   LONDON. 

At  this  early  age  Watt  suffered  from  continual  and 
violent  headaches,  which  often  affected  his  nervous  sys- 
tem for  many  days,  even  weeks ;  and  he  was  similarly 
afflicted  throughout  his  long  life.  He  seldom  rose  early, 
but  accomplished  more  in  a  few  hours'  study  than  ordi- 
nary minds  do  in  many  days.  He  was  never  in  a»hurry, 
and  always  had  leisure  to  give  to  his  friends,  to  poetry, 
romance,  and  the  publications  of  the  day :  he  read  indis- 
criminately almost  every  new  book  he  could  procure. 
He  assisted  his  father  in  his  business,  and  soon  learned 
to  construct  with  his  own  hands  several  of  the  articles 
required  in  the  way  of  his  parent's  trade ;  and  by  means 
of  a  small  forge,  set  up  for  his  own  use,  he  repaired  and 
made  various  kinds  of  instruments,  and  converted,  by  the 
way,  a  large  silver  coin  into  a  punch-ladle,  as  a  trophy  of 
his  early  skill  as  a  metal-smith.  From  this  aptitude  for 
ingenious  handiwork,  and  in  accordance  with  his  own  de- 
liberate choice,  it  was  decided  that  he  should  proceed  to 
qualify  himself  for  following  the  trade  of  a  mathematical- 
instrument-maker.  He  accordingly  went  to  Glasgow  in 
June,  1754,  his  list  of  personal  property  including  "silk 
stockings,  ruffled  shirts,  cut-velvet  waistcoats,  one  work- 
ing ditto,  one  leather  apron,  a  quadrant,  a  score  of  arti- 
cles of  carpentry,  and  a  pair  bibels."  From  Glasgow, 
after  a  year's  stay,  he  proceeded  for  better  instruction  to 
London,  on  the  5th  of  June,  1755,  in  charge  of  his  con- 
nection, John  Man*.  They  traveled  on  horseback,  riding 
the  same  horses  throughout,  and  taking  twelve  days  for 
the  journey. 

On  Watt's  arrival  in  the  metropolis  he  sought  a  situa- 
tion, but  in  vain  ;  and  he  was  beginning  to  despond,  when 
he  obtained  work  with  one  John  Morgan,  an  instrument- 
maker  in  Finch  Lane,  Cornhill.  Here  he  gradually  be- 
came proficient  in  making  quadrants,  parallel  rulers,  com- 
passes, theodolites,  etc.,  until,  at  the  end  of  a  year's  prac- 
tice, he  could  make  "  a  brass  sector  with  a  French  joint, 
which  is  reckoned  as  nice  a  piece  of  framing  work  as  is 
in  the  trade."  During  this  interval  he  contrived  to  live 
upon  8s.  a  week,  exclusive  of  his  lodging.  His  fear  of 
the  press-gang  and  his  bodily  ailments,  however,  led  to 
his  quitting  London  in  August,  1756,  and  returning  to 
Scotland,  after  investing  twenty  guineas  in  additional 
tools. 


WAIT'S  GREAT  DISCOVERY.  285 

At  Glasgow,  through  the  intervention  of  Dr.  Dick,  he 
was  first  employed  in  cleaning  and  repairing  some  of  the 
instruments  belonging  to  the  college,  and,  after  some  dif- 
ficulty, he  received  permission  to  open  a  shop  within  the 
precincts  as  "  mathematical-instrument-maker  to  the  Uni- 
versity." Here  Watt  prospered,  pursuing  alike  his  course 
of  manual  labor  and  of  mental  study,  and  especially  ex- 
tending his  acquaintance  with  physics ;  endeavoring,  as 
he  said,  "  to  find  out  the  weak  side  of  Nature,  and  to 
vanquish  her."  About  this  time  he  contrived  an  ingen- 
ious machine  for  drawing  in  perspective ;  and  from  fifty 
to  eighty  of  these  instruments,  manufactured  by  him, 
were  sent  to  different  parts  of  the  world.  He  had  now 
procured  the  friendship  of  Dr.  Black  and  another  Univer- 
sity worthy,  John  Robison,  who,  in  stating  the  circum- 
stances of  his  first  introduction  to  Watt,  says,  "  I  saw  a 
workman,  and  expected  no  more,  but  was  surprised  to 
find  a  philosopher  as  young  as  myself,  and  always  ready 
to  instruct  me." 

It  was  some  time  in  1764  that  the  Professor  of  Natural 
Philosophy  in  the  University  desired  Watt  to  repair  a 
pretty  model  of  Newcomen's  steam-engine.  Like  every 
thing  which  came  into  Watt's  hands,  it  soon  became  an 
object  of  most  serious  study.  Now  the  great  defect  of 
this  engine  was  that  more  than  three  fourths  of  the  whole 
steam  was  condensed  and  wasted  during  the  ascent  of 
the  piston,  and  to  this  defect  Watt  applied  himself,  and 
so  approached  his  great  achievement,  of  which  Robison 
records  these  incidents : 

At  the  breaking  up  of  the  College  (I  think  in  1765)  I  went  to  the 
country.  About  a  fortnight  after  this  I  came  to  town,  and  went  to 
have  a  chat  with  Mr.  Watt,  and  to  communicate  to  him  some  observ- 
ations I  had  made  on  Desaguliers'  and  Belidor's  account  of  the 
steam-engine.  I  came  into  Mr.  Watt's  parlor  without  ceremony,  and 
found  him  sitting  before  the  fire,  having  lying  on  his  knees  a  little  tin 
cistern  which  he  was  looking  at.  I  entered  into  conversation  on  what 
we  had  been  speaking  of  at  our  last  meeting — something  about  steam. 
All  the  while  Mr.  Watt  kept  looking  at  the  fire,  and  laid  down  the 
cistern  at  the  foot  of  his  chair.  At  last  he  looked  up  at  me,  and  said 
briskly,  ' '  You  need  not  fash  yourself  any  more*  about  that,  man ;  I 
have  now  made  an  engine  that  shall  not  waste  a  particle  of  steam. 
It  shall  all  be  boiling  hot — ay,  and  hot  water  injected,  if  I  please." 
So  saying  Mr.  Watt  looked  with  complacency  at  the  little  thing  at 
his  feet,  and,  seeing  that  I  observed  him,  he  shoved  it  away  under  a 


286 

table  with  his  foot.  I  put  a  question  to  him  about  the  nature  of  his 
contrivance.  He  answered  me  rather  dryly.  I  did  not  press  him  to 
a  farther  explanation  at  that  time,  knowing  that  I  had  offended  him 
a  few  days  before  by  blabbing  a  petty  contrivance  which  he  had  hit 
on  for  turning  the  cocks  of  the  engine.  I  had  mentioned  this  in 
presence  of  an  engine-builder,  who  was  going  to  erect  one  for  a 
friend  of  mine,  and  this  having  come  to  Mr.  Watt's  ears,  he  found 
fault  with  it. 

At  a  later  period  Watt  frankly  told  Robison  all  his 
contrivance;  and  long  after,  the  latter  found  that  the 
little  apparatus  which  he  saw  on  Watt's  knee,  and  which 
he  pushed  under  the.  table  with  his  foot,  was  the  con- 
denser of  his  first  experiment.  In  the  summer  of  1767 
the  whole  contrivance  was  perfect  in  Watt's  mind ;  and 
so  well  defined  there  was  the  date  of  his  invention,  that, 
on  being  asked  in  1817  whether  he  recollected  how  the 
first  idea  of  his  great  discovery  occurred  to  him,  he  re- 
plied, "  Oh  yes,  perfectly.  One  Sunday  afternoon,  I  had 
gone  to  take  a  walk  in  the  Green  of  Glasgow,  and  when 
about  half  way  between  the  Herd's  house  and  Arris  Well, 
my  thoughts  having  been  naturally  turned  to  the  experi- 
ments I  had  been  engaged  in  for  saving  heat  in  the 
cylinder,  at  that  part  of  the  road  the  idea  occurred  to  me 
that,  as  steam  was  an  elastic  vapor,  it  would  expand,  and 
rush  into  a  previously  exhausted  space;  and  that  if  I 
were  to  produce  a  vacuum  in  a  separate  vessel,  and  open 
a  communication  between  the  steam  in  the  cylinder  and 
the  exhausted  vessel,  such  would  be  the  consequence." 

As  the  result  of  his  examination  of  the  Newcomen  engine,  Watt 
soon  found,  notwithstanding  all  his  efforts,  that  it  would  not  give  the 
amount  of  work  represented  by  the  fuel  consumed  ;  and,  on  examin- 
ing the  structure  of  the  machine  more  closely,  he  was  led  to  ask  why 
the  steam  should  first  do  its  work  in  the  cylinder,  and  then  be  con- 
densed there  by  a  jet  of  cold  water.  Steam,  like  air,  is  an  elastic 
fluid,  and  will  rush  into  a  vacuum  communicating  with  a  vessel  in 
which  it  is  contained.  Let  the  cylinder  of  the  engine  be  filled  with 
steam ;  establish  a  communication  between  it  and  another  vessel,  kept 
as  free  as  possible  of  air,  and  in  which  a  jet  of  cold  water  is  playing ; 
the  steam  will  then  be  condensed,  and  the  temperature  of  the  cylinder 
will  not  be  affected.  This  is  the  great  discovery  of  Watt ;  he  made 
others  more  ingenious,  but  none  of  greater  utility :  the  best  proof  of 
its  excellence  is,  that  it  still  keeps  its  place  in  the  condensing  engine 

after  nearly  a  century  of  progress  in  the  art The  pigmy 

cistern  (in  which  Watt  made  his  first  experiment)  has  been  the  parent 
of  a  progeny  of  giants,  and  has  astonished  the  world  by  the  magni- 
tude of  the  results  produced  from  a  cause  apparently  so  insignificant. — 
JAMES  SIME,  M.  A, 


WATT   AND   BOULTON.  287 

The  interesting  little  model,  as  altered  by  the  hand  of 
Watt,  was  long  placed  beside  the  noble  statue  of  the  en- 
gineer in  the  Hunterian  Museum  at  Glasgow.  Watt 
himself,  when  he  had  got  the  bearings  of  the  invention, 
could  think  of  nothing  else  but  his  machine,  and  address- 
ed himself  to  Dr.  Roebuck,  of  the  Carron  Iron-works, 
with  the  view  of  its  practical  introduction  to  the  world. 
A  partnership  ensued,  but  the  connection  did  not  prove 
satisfactory.  Watt  went  on  with  his  experiments,  and 
in  September,  1766,  wrote  to  a  friend,  "I  think  I  have 
laid  up  a  stock  of  experience  that  will  soon  pay  me  for 
the  trouble  it  has  cost  me."  Yet  it  was  between  eight 
and  nine  years  before  that  invaluable  experience  was 
made  available,  so  as  either  to  benefit  the  public  or  repay 
the  inventor,  and  a  much  longer  term  elapsed  before  it 
was  possible  for  that  repayment  to  be  reckoned  in  the 
form  of  substantial  profit. 

Watt  now  began  to  practice  as  a  land-surveyor  and 
civil  engineer.  His  first  engineering  work  was  a  survey 
for  a  canal  to  unite  tire  Forth  and  Clyde,  in  furtherance 
of  which  he  had  to  appear  before  the  House  of  Commons. 
His  consequent  journey  to  London  was  still  more  im- 
portant, for  then  it  was  that  he  saw  for  the  first  time  the 
treat  manufactory  which  Boulton  had  established  at 
oho,  and  of  which  he  was  afterward  himself  to  be  the 
guiding  intelligence.  In  the  mean  time,  among  his  other 
performances,  he  invented  a  Micrometer  for  measuring 
distances ;  and,  what  is  still  more  remarkable,  he  enter- 
tained the  idea  of  moving  canal-boats  by  the  steam- 
engine  through  the  instrumentality  of  a  Spiral  Oar, 
which  as  nearly  as  possible  coincides  with  the  screw-pro- 
peller of  our  day. 

Watt's  negotiations  for  partnership  with  Boulton  were 
long  and  tedious.  Dr.  Roebuck's  creditors  concurred 
because,  curiously  enough,  none  of  them  valued  Watt's 
engine  a  farthing.  Watt  himself  now  began  to  despair, 
and  his  health  failed ;  yet  in  1774,  when  he  had  removed 
to  Birmingham,  he  wrote  to  his  father :  "  The  Fire-en- 
gine I  have  invented  is  now  going,  and  answers  much 
better  than  any  other  that  has  yet  been  made,  and  I  ex- 
pect that  the  invention  will  be  very  beneficial  to  me." 

A  long  series  of  experimental  trials  was  nevertheless 


288 

requisite  before  the  engine  could  be  brought  to  such  per- 
fection as  to  render  it  generally  available  to  the  public, 
and  therefore  profitable  to  its  manufacturers.  In  Janu- 
ary, 1775,  six  years  of  the  patent  had  elapsed,  and  there 
seemed  some  probability  of  the  remaining  eight  running 
out  as  fruitlessly.  An  application  which  was  made  for 
the  extension  of  its  term  was  unexpectedly  opposed  by 
the  eloquence  of  Burke;  but  the  orator  and  his  asso- 
ciates failed,  and  the  extension  was  accorded  by  Act  of 
Parliament. 

The  first  practical  employment  of  Watt's  engines  to 
any  considerable  extent  was  in  the  mining  districts  of 
Cornwall,  where  he  himself  was,  in  consequence,  com- 
pelled to  spend  much  of  his  time  subsequent  to  1775. 
Here  he  had  to  contend  not  only  with  natural  objects  in 
the  dark  abysses  of  deeply-flooded  mines,  but  with  a 
rude  and  obstinate  class  of  men  as  deeply  flooded  with 
inveterate  prejudices.  The  result  in  the  way  of  profit 
was  not,  however,  satisfactory,  notwithstanding  the  serv- 
ice to  the  mining  interest  was  enormous.  "  It  appears," 
says  Watt  in  1780,  "by  our  books,  that  Cornwall  has 
hitherto  eat  up  all  the  profits  we  have  drawn  from  it, 
and  all  we  have  got  by  other  places,  and  a  good  sum  of 
our  own  money  to  the  bargain."  Even  in  1 783  he  writes, 
"We  have  altered  all  the  engines  in  Cornwall  but  one, 
and  many  in  other  parts  of  England,  but  do  not  acquire 
riches  so  fast  as  might  be  imagined;  the  expenses  of 
carrying  on  our  business  are  necessarily  very  great,  and 
have  hitherto  consumed  almost  all  our  profits ;  but  we 
hope  to  do  better  by  continuing  our  attention  and  exer- 
tions, and  by  multiplying  the  number  of  our  works." 

At  this  stage  Watt  himself  was  more  fertile  in  me- 
chanical inventions  than  in  any  other  portion  of  his  busy 
life.  Taking  his  patents  in  their  chronological  order,  the 
first  (subsequent  to  that  of  1769)  was  "  for  a  new  method 
of  copying  letters  and  other  writings  expeditiously"  by 
means  of  copying  presses.  Of  the  same  date  was  his  in- 
vention of  a  machine  "for  drying  linen  and  muslin  by 
steam."  On  the  25th  of  October,  1781,  he  took  out  his 
third  patent  (the  second  of  the  steam-engine  series)  "  for 
certain  new  methods  of  applying  the  vibrating  or  recip- 
rocating motion  of  steam  or  fire  engines,  to  produce  a 


289 

continued  rotative  motion  round  an  axis  or  centre,  and 
thereby  to  give  motion  to  the  wheels  of  mills  or  other 
machines.  One  of  these  methods  was  that  commonly 
known  as  the  sun  and  planet  wheels  •  they  were  five  in 
all.  A  favorite  employment  of  his  in  the  workshops  at 
Soho,  in  the  latter  month  of  1783  and  the  earlier  ones  of 
1*784,  was  to  teach  his  steam-engine,  now  become  nearly 
as  docile  as  it  was  powerful,  to  work  a  tilt-hammer  for 
forging  iron  and  making  steel.  "  Three  hundred  blows 
per  minute — a  thing  never  done  before,"  filled  him,  as 
his  biographer*  says,  with  feelings  of  excusable  pride. 
Another  patent  in  the  steam-engine  series,  taken  out  in 
1784,  contained,  beside  other  methods  of  converting  a 
circular  or  angular  motion  into  a  perpendicular  or  recti- 
lineal motion,  the  well-known  and  much-admired  parallel 
motion,  and  the  application  of  the  steam-engine  to  give 
motion  to  wheel-carriages  for  carrying  persons  and 
goods.  To  ascertain  the  exact  number  of  strokes  made 
by  an  engine  during  a  given  time,  and  thereby  to  check 
the  cheats  of  the  Cornish  miners,  Watt  also  invented  the 
"  Counter,"  with  its  several  indexes.  Among  his  leading 
improvements,  introduced  at  various  periods,  were  the 
throttle-valve,  the  application  of  the  governor,  the  barom- 
eter or  float,  the  steam-gauge,  and  the  indicator.  The 
term  during  which  he  seems  to  have  thus  combined  the 
greatest  maturity  with  the  greatest  activity  of  intellect, 
and  the  portion  of  his  life  which  they  comprehended, 
was  from  his  fortieth  to  his  fiftieth  year.  Yet  it  was  a 
term  of  increased  suffering  from  his  acute  sick  headaches, 
and  remarkable  for  the  infirmities  over  which  he  tri- 
umphed ;  notwithstanding,  he  himself  complained  of  his 
"  stupidity  and  want  of  the  inventive  faculty." 

Watt's  chemical  studies  in  1783,  and  the  calculations 
they  involved  from  experiments  made  by  foreign  chem- 
ists, induced  him  to  make  a  proposal  for  a  philosophical 
uniformity  of  weights  and  measures  ;  and  he  discussed 
this  proposal  with  Priestley  and  Magellan.  While  Watt 
was  examining  the  constituent  parts  of  water,  he  had  op- 

*  Mr.  James  Patrick  Muirhead,  in  his  Life  of  James  Watt,  with 
Selections  from  his  Correspondence;  froni  which  work,  and  an  able  re- 
view of  the  same  in  the  Times  journal,  the  leading  data  and  charac- 
teristics in  the  present  sketch  have  been  in  part  derived. 


290  PORTRAIT    OF   WATT. 

portunities  of  familiar  intercourse  not  only  with  Priest- 
ley, but  with  Withering,  Keir,  Edgeworth,  Galton,  Dar- 
win, and  his  own  partner  Boulton — all  men  above  the 
average  for  their  common  interest  in  scientific  inquiries. 
Dr.  Parr  frequently  attended  their  meetings,  and  they 
kept  up  a  correspondence  with  Sir  William  Herschel, 
Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Dr.  Solander,  and  Afzelius.  Mrs. 
Schimmelpenninck,  who  was  greatly  given  to  physiog- 
nomical studies,  has  left  us  this  picture  of  Watt  at  this 
period : 

Mr.  Boulton  was  a  man  to  rule  society  with  dignity ;  Mr.  Watt  to 
lead  the  contemplative  life  of  a  deeply  introverted  and  patiently  ob- 
servant philosopher.  He  was  one  of  the  most  complete  specimens  of 
the  melancholic  temperament.  His  head  was  generally  bent  forward, 
or  leaning  on  his  hand  in  meditation ;  his  shoulders  stooping,  and  his 
chest  falling  in ;  his  limbs  lank  and  unmuscular,  and  his  complexion 
sallow.  His  intellectual  development  was  magnificent;  comparison 
and  causality  immense,  with  large  ideality  and  constructiveness,  indi- 
viduality, and  enormous  concentrativeness  and  caution. 

He  had  a  broad  Scottish  accent;  gentle,  modest,  and  unassuming 
manners ;  yet,  when  he  "  entered  a  room,  men  of  letters,  men  of  sci- 
ence, nay,  military  men.  artists,  ladies,  even  little  children,  thronged 
round  him.  Ladies  would  appeal  to  him  on  the  best  means  of  devis- 
ing grates,  curing  smoky  chimneys,  warming  their  houses,  and  obtain- 
ing fast  colors.  I  can  speak  from  experience  of  his  teaching  me  how 
to  make  a  dulcimer  and  improve  a  Jew's  harp." 

In  the  year  1786  Watt  and  Boulton  visited  Paris,  on 
the  invitation  of  the  French  government,  to  superintend 
the  erection  of  certain  steam-engines,  and  especially  to 
suggest  improvements  in  the  great  hydraulic  machine 
of  Marly,  which  Watt  himself  designates  a  "  venerable" 
work.  In  Paris  Watt  made  many  acquaintances,  includ- 
ing Lavoisier,  La  Place,  Fourcroy,  and  others  scarcely 
less  eminent ;  and  while  here  he  discovered  with  Ber- 
thollet  a  new  method  of  bleaching  by  chlorates,  an  in- 
vention of  the  latter  which  Watt  subsequently  introduced 
into  England. 

Meanwhile  Watt  had  vigilantly  to  defend  his  patents 
at  home,  which  were  assailed  by  unworthy  and  surrep- 
titious rivals  as  soon  as  it  was  proved  that  they  were 
pecuniarily  valuable.  Some  of  the  competing  engines, 
as  Watt  himself  described  them,  were  simply  asthmatic. 
"  Hornblower's,  at  Radstock,  was  obliged  to  stand  still 
once  every  ten  minutes  to  snore  and  snort."  "  Some 


WATT    AND    STEAM    NAVIGATION.  291 

were  like  Evans's  Mill,  which  was  a  gentlemanly  mill ; 
it  would  go  when  it  had  nothing  to  do,  but  it  refused  to 
work."  The  legal  proceedings  both  in  equity  and  at  com- 
mon law  which  now  became  necessary  were  numerous. 
One  bill  of  costs,  from  1796  to  1800,  amounted  to  between 
£5000  and  £6000 ;  and  the  mental  and  bodily  labor,  the 
anxiety  and  vexation  which  were  superadded,  involved  a 
fearful  tax  on  the  province  of  Watt's  discoveries. 

With  the  year  1800  came  the  expiration  of  the  privi- 
lege of  the  patent  of  1769,  as  extended  by  the  statute  of 
1775,  and  also  the  dissolution  of  the  original  copartner- 
ship of  Messrs.  Boulton  and  Watt,  then  of  five-and-twenty 
years'  duration.  The  contract  was  renewed  by  their  sons, 
the  business  having  become  so  profitable  that  Watt  and 
his  children  were  provided  with  a  source  of  independent 
income ;  and  at  the  age  of  sixty-four  the  great  inventor 
had  personally  realized  some  of  the  benefits  he  contem- 
plated. 

Soho,  to  some  extent,  maintained  its  reputation  as  a 
steam  foundry  after  Watt  himself  had  ceased  to  manage 
it.  By  1824,  when  a  monument  in  Westminster  Abbey 
was  voted  to  him,  it  had  created  power  in  round  num- 
bers equal  to  that  of  100,000  horses.  By  1854  an  addi- 
tion of  nearly  two  thirds  of  that  amount  had  been  made, 
giving  a  total  amount  equal  to  that  of  170,000  horses; 
and  this  was  the  amount  of  power  supplied  from  the 
forges  of  one  manufactory  only.  *, 

Henceforth  Watt's  ingenuity  became  discursive,  dis- 
cretionary, almost  capricious,  but  in  every  phase  and 
form  it  continued  to  be  beneficent.  In  1808  he  founded 
a  prize  in  Glasgow  College,  as  an  acknowledgment  of 
"the  many  favors"  which  that  learned  body  had  con- 
ferred upon  him.  In  1816  he  made  a  donation  to  the 
town  of  Greenock,  "  to  form  the  beginning  of  a  scientific 
library"  for  the  instruction  of  its  young  men.  Nor,  amid 
such  donations,  were  others  wanting  on  his  part,  such  as 
true  religion  prescribes — to  console  the  poor  and  relieve 
the  suffering. 

While  resting  in  his  latter  days  from  severer  labors, 
Watt's  mind  still  dwelt  on  their  great  development  in 
the  form  of  Steam  Navigation.  It  was  long  since  he 
had  posed  his  significant  question  as  to  whether  "  a  spiral 
oar"  or  "  two  wheels"  were  to  be  preferred  for  this  pur- 


292  WATT   AND   THE   STEAM-CARKIAGE. 

pose.  But  be  lived  to  know  that  a  steam-boat  bad  been 
successfully  used  in  America,  that  the  British  Channel 
had  been  crossed,  and  the  Rhine  navigated  by  another ; 
both  vessels,  the  American  and  the  British,  having  been 
impelled  by  engines  manufactured  at  Soho,  constructed 
on  the  principles  invented  by  himself,  and  not  without 
the  benefit  of  his  own  direct  inspection  and  counsels. 

In  1816,  on  a  visit  to  Greenock,  Watt  made  a  voyage 
in  a  steam-boat  to  Rothsay  and  back  again.  In  the 
course  of  this  experimental  trip  he  pointed  out  to  the 
engineer  of  the  boat  the  method  of  "  backing"  the  en- 
gine. With  a  foot-rule  he  demonstrated  to  him  what 
was  meant.  Not  succeeding,  however,  he  at  last,  under 
the  impulse  of  the  ruling  passion  (and  we  must  remember 
he  was  then  eighty),  threw  off  his  over-coat,  and,  putting 
his  hand  to  the  engine  himself,  showed  the  practical  ap- 
plication of  his  lecture.  Previously  to  this,  the  "  back- 
stroke" of  the  steam-boat  engine  was  either  unknown  or 
not  generally  known.  The  practice  was  to  stop  the  en- 
gine entirely  a  considerable  time  before  the  vessel  reach- 
ed the  point  of  mooring,  in  order  to  allow  for  the  gradual 
and  natural  diminution  of  her  speed. 

With  regard  to  the  application  of  steam  power  to  loco- 
motion on  land,  it  is  remarkable  enough  that,  when 
Watt's  attention  was  first  directed,  by  his  friend  Robi- 
son,  to  the  steam-engine,  "he  (Robison)  at  that  time 
threw  out  an  idea  of  applying  the  power  to  the  moving 
of  wheel-carriages."  "  But  ^the  scheme,"  adds  Watt, 
"  was  not  matured,  and  was  soon  abandoned  on  his  go- 
ing abroad." 

In  1769,  however,  when  he  heard  that  a  linen-draper, 
one  Moore,  had  taken  out  a  patent  for  moving  wheel- 
carriages  by  steam,  he  replied,  "  If  linen-draper  Moore 
does  not  use  my  engine  to  drive  his  chaises,  he  can't 
drive  them  by  steam."  In  the  specification  of  his  patent 
of  1784  he  even  described  the  principles  and  construction 
of  "  steam-engines  which  are  applied  to  give  motion  to 
wheel-carriages  for  removing  persons  or  goods,  or  other 
matters,  from  place  to  place  ;'  and  in  1786,  Watt  himself 
had  a  steam-carriage  "  of  some  size  under  hand ;"  but  his 
most  developed  plan  was  to  move  such  carriages  "  on  a 
hard,* smooth  plain;"  and  there  is  no  evidence  to  show 
that  he  even  anticipated  the  union  of  the  rail  and  wheel. 


WATT   IN    OLD    AGE,  293 

Among  Watt's  mechanical  recreations,  soon  after  the 
date  of  the  last  of  his  steam-engine  patents,  were  four 
plans  of  making  lamps,  which  he  describes  in  a  letter  to 
Argand ;  and  for  a  long  time  lamps  were  made  at  Soho 
upon  his  principles,  which  gave  a  light  surpassing,  both 
in  steadiness  and  brilliancy,  any  thing  of  the  kind  that 
had  appeared.  About  a  year  after,  in  1788,  he  made  "a 
pretty  instrument  for  determining  the  specific  gravities 
of  liquids,"  having,  he  says  to  Dr.  Black,  improved  on  a 
hint  he  had  taken. 

Watt  also  turned  his  "  idle  thoughts"  toward  the  con- 
struction of  an  Arithmetical  Machine  ;  but  he  does  not 
appear  ever  to  have  prosecuted  this  design  farther  than 
by  mentally  considering  the  manner  in  which  he  could 
make  it  perform  the  processes  of  multiplication  and  di- 
vision. 

Early  in  the  present  century  Watt  devised,  for  the 
Glasgow  Water-works,  to  bring  pure  spring-water  across 
the  Clyde,  an  articulated  suction-pipe,  with  joints  formed 
on  the  principle  of  those  in  a  lobster's  tail,  and  so  made 
capable  of  accommodating  itself  to  all  the  actual  and  pos- 
sible bendings  at  the  bottom  of  the  river.  This  pipe  was, 
moreover,  executed  at  Soho  from  his  plans,  and  was  found 
to  succeed  perfectly. 

Watt  describes,  as  his  hobby-horse,  a  machine  to  copy 
sculpture,  suggested  to  him  by  an  implement  he  had  seen 
and  admired  in  Paris  in  1802,  where  it  was  used  for  trac- 
ing and  multiplying  the  dies  of  medals.  He  foresaw  the 
possibility  of  enlarging  its  powers  so  as  to  make  it  capa- 
ble of  working  even  on  wood  and  marble,  to  do  for  solid 
masses  and  in  hard  materials  what  his  copying-machine 
of  1782  had  already  done  for  drawings  and  writings  im- 
pressed upon  flat  surfaces  of  paper — to  produce,  in  fact, 
a  perfect  fac-simile  of  the  original  model.  He  worked  at 
this  machine  most  assiduously  ;  and  his  "  likeness  lathe," 
as  he  termed  it,  was  set  up  in  a  garret,  which,  with  all  its 
mysterious  contents,  its  tools  and  models  included,  have 
been  carefully  preserved  as  he  left  them. 

It  is  gratifying  to  find  that  the  charms  of  Watt's  pres- 
ence were  not  dimmed  by  age.  "  His  friends,"  says  Lord 
Jeffrey,  speaking  of  a  visit  which  he  paid  to  Scotland 
when  upward  of  eighty, "  in  that  part  of  the  country 
never  saw  him  more  full  of  intellectual  vigor  and  collo- 


294  WATT   IN    OLD    AGE. 

quial  animation,  never  more  delightful  or  more  instruct- 
ive." It  was  then  also  that  Sir  Walter  Scott,  meeting 
him  "  surrounded  by  a  little  band  of  northern  literati," 
saw  and  heard  what  he  felt  he  was  never  to  see  or  hear 
again — "  the  alert,  kind,  benevolent  old  man,  his  talents 
and  fancy  overflowing  on  every  subject,  with  his  atten- 
tion alive  to  every  one's  question,  his  information  at  ev- 
ery one's  command."  Campbell  the  poet,  who  saw  him 
later,  in  the  beginning  of  1819  (he  was  then  eighty-three), 
describes  him  as  so  full  of  anecdote  that  he  spent  one  of 
the  most  amusing  days  he  had  ever  had  with  him.  Lord 
Brougham,  later  still,  in  the  summer  of  the  same  year, 
found  his  instructive  conversation  and  his  lively  and  even 
playful  manner  unchanged.  But  in  the  autumn  of  this 
year,  on  the  1 9th  of  August,  he  expired  tranquilly  at  his 
house  at  Heathfield.  He  was  buried  at  Handsworth.  A 
tribute  to  his  memory  was  but  tardily  rendered  by  the 
nation.  Five  years  subsequent  to  Watt's  death,  in  1824, 
a  meeting  was  held,  at  which  the  erection  of  a  statue  was 
proposed  by  Baron  Dupin :  there  were  present  the  prime 
minister,  the  Earl  of  Liverpool,  and  his  colleagues,  Mr. 
(afterward  Sir  Robert)  Peel,  and  Mr.  Huskisson ;  the 
other  principal  speakers  were  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  Mr. 
Wilberforce,  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  and  Mr.  (now  Lord) 
Brougham :  yet  of  these  illustrious  men,  two  only,  Peel 
and  Brougham,  lived  to  see  completed  the  memorial 
which  their  eloquence  so  honorably  advocated,  for  the 
statue  was  not  erected  until  eleven  years  after  it  had 
been  proposed — that  is,  in  1835. 

In  Westminster  Abbey — in  the  chapel  of  St.  Paul,  on 
the  north  side  of  the  choir  of  the  chapel  of  Edward  the 
Confessor — is  placed  a  marble  sitting  statue  of  James 
Watt,  by  Chantrey,  which  was  voted  at  the  above  meet- 
ing. It  is  a  fine  work,  badly  located,  as  classic  sculpture 
in  a  Gothic  edifice  ever  must  be.  The  pedestal  bears  an 
eloquent  inscription  from  the  pen  of  Lord  Brougham,  and 
is  remarkable  for  not  containing  a  word  of  monumental 
flattery.*  It  is  as  follows  : 

Not  to  perpetuate  a  name 

Which  must  endure  while  the  peaceful  arts  flourish, 
But  to  show 

*  For  this  portrait-statue  Chantrey  received  6000  guineas. 


STATUE    OP    WATT   IX    WESTMINSTER   ABBEY.         295 

That  mankind  have  learned  to  honor  those 
Who  best  deserve  their  gratitude, 

The  king, 

His  ministers,  and  many  of  the  nobles 

And  commoners  of  the  realm, 

Raised  this  monument  to 

JAMES  WATT, 

Who,  directing  the  force  of  an  original  genius 

Early  exercised  in  philosophic  research 

ToHhe  improvement  of 

The  steam-engine, 

Enlarged  the  resources  of  his  country, 

Increased  the  power  of  man, 

And  rose  to  an  eminent  place 

Among  the  most  illustrious  followers  of  science 

And  the  real  benefactors  of  the  world. 

Born  at  Greenock,  MDCCXXXVI.  Died  at  Heathfield,  in  Stafford- 
shire, MDCCCXIX. 

Jeffrey  and  Arago  added  more  elaborate  tributes  to 
Watt's  genius ;  and  Wordsworth  has  declared  that  he 
looked  upon  him,  considering  its  magnitude  and  univer- 
sality, "  as  perhaps  the  most  extraordinary  man  that  this 
country  has  ever  produced."  His  noblest  monument  is, 
however,  his  own  work. 

Wherever  the  Steam-engine  is  applied  to  manufactures  or  arts,  to 
travel  and  transport  by  sea  or  land,  to  agriculture,  even  to  war,  there 
is  Watt's  instrumentality.  The  steam  power  of  Great  Britain  alone 
is  a  stupendous  item  to  contemplate  in  this  sense.  It  is  estimated  in 
a  recent  number  of  the  Quarterly  Review  as  equivalent  to  the  manual 
labor  of  400, 000,000  of  men,  or  more  than  double  the  number  of  males 
supposed  to  inhabit  the  globe.  Such  power  did  Watt  confer  upon  his 
nation,  and  in  a  still  larger  degree  upon  his  species. 

A  century  ago  (says  Dr.  Arnott),  no  man  had  conceived  it  possible 
that  human  ingenuity  would  one  day  devise  a  machine  like  the  modern 
Steam-engine,  which,  at  small  comparative  cost  and  with  perfect  obe- 
dience to  man's  will,  should  be  able  to  perform  the  work  of  millions 
of  human  beings,  and  of  countless  horses  and  oxen,  and  of  water-mills 
and  wind-mills ;  and  which,  in  doing  such  complex  and  delicate  labor 
as  formerly  was  supposed  to  be  obtainable  only  from  human  hands 
and  skill,  as  of  spinning,  weaving,  embroidering  flower-patterns  on 
cloth,  etc.,  should  work  with  speed  and  exactness  far  surpassing  the 
execution  of  ordinary  human  hands. 

Watt's  patent  for  his  first  improvements  in  the  Steam-engine  was 
taken  out  in  the  same  year  as  Arkwright's  patent  for  Spinning  with 
rollers,  viz.,  1769 — one  of  the  most  brilliant  eras  in  the  annals  of  in- 
ventive genius — when  Black  and  Priestley  were  making  their  great 
discoveries  in  chemistry;  when  Hargreaves,  Arkwright,  and  Watt 
revolutionized  the  processes  of  manufacture ;  when  Smeaton  and 
Brindley  executed  prodigies  of  engineering  science. 


THE  COTTON  MANUFACTURE: 

HARGREAVES  AND  HIS  SPINNING-JENNY; 
ARKWRIGHT  AND  THE  SPINNING-FRAME. 

SCAECELY  a  century  has  elapsed  since  a  native  of  Lan- 
cashire, of  very  humble  origin,  began  to  devote  his  at- 
tention to  the  application  of  machinery  to  the  preparation 
and  spinning  of  raw  cotton  for  weft.  In  the  year  1760, 
or  soon  after,  a  Carding  Engine,  not  very  different  from 
that  now  in  use,  was  contrived  by  James  Hargreaves,  an 
untaught  weaver,  living  near  Church,  in  Lancashire ;  and 
in  1767  the  Spinning- Jenny  was  invented  by  the  same 
person.  This  machine,  as  at  first  formed,  contained  eight 
spindles,  which  were  made  to  revolve  by  means  of  bands 
from  a  horizontal  wheel.  Subsequent  improvements  in- 
creased the  power  of  the  Spinning- Jenny  to  eighty  spin- 
dles ;  when  the  saving  of  labor  which  it  thus  occasioned 
produced  considerable  alarm  among  those  persons  who 
had  employed  the  old  mode  of  spinning,  and  a  party  of 
them  broke  into  Hargreaves'  house,  and  destroyed  his 
machine.  The  great  advantage  of  the  invention  was  so 
apparent,  however,  that  it  was  soon  again  brought  into 
use,  and  nearly  superseded  the  employment  of  the  old 
spinning-wheel,  when  a  second  rising  took  place  of  the 
persons  whose  labor  was  thus  superseded  by  it.  They 
went  through  the  country  destroying,  wherever  they 
could  find  them,  both  Carding  and  Spinning  Machines,  by 
which  means  the  manufacture  was  for  a  time  driven  away 
from  Lancashire  to  Nottingham. 

Hargreaves  stated  that  he  derived  the  idea  of  the  Jenny 
from  the  following  incident :  Seeing  a  hand-wheel  with  a 
single  spindle  overturned,  he  remarked  that  the  spindle, 
which  was  before  horizontal,  was  then  vertical ;  and  as 
it  continued  to  revolve,  he  drew  the  roving  of  wool  to- 
ward him  into  a  thread.  It  then  seemed  to  Hargreaves 
plausible  that,  if  something  could  be  applied  to  hold  the 
roving  as  the  finger  and  thumb  did,  and  that  contrivance 


AKK WEIGHT'S  SPINNING-FRAME.  297 

to  travel  backward  on  wheels,  six  or  eight,  or  even  twelve 
threads,  from  as  many  spindles,  might  be  spun  at  once. 
This  was  done,  and  succeeded ;  but  Hargreaves,  driven 
by  mobs,  as  we  have  described,  to  Nottingham,  unable 
to  bear  up  against  such  ill  treatment,  there  died  in  ob- 
scurity and  distress,  having  given  the  property  of  his 
Jenny  to  the  Strutts,  who  thereon  laid  the  foundation  of 
their  industrial  success  and  opulence. 

The  cotton  yarn  produced  by  the  common  spinning- 
wheel  and  spinning-jenny  could,  however,  not  be  made 
sufficiently  strong  to  be  used  as  warp,  for  which  purpose 
linen  yarn  was  employed;  and  it  was  not  until  another 
machine,  invented  by  an  individual  of  as  humble  origin 
as  Hargreaves,  was  brought  into  successful  operation, 
that  the  above  disadvantage  was  overcome.  This  ma- 
chine,  which  took  up  what  Hargreaves  had  begun,  was; 
the  Spinning •-  Frame,  invented  by  Richard  Arkwright, 
who  was  born  at  Preston  in  1732,  and,  being  the  young- 
est of  a  poor  family  of  thirteen  children,  he  received  but 
little  education,  if  he  ever  was  at  school  at  all.  He  was 
bred  to  the  business  of  a  barber,  which  he  carried  on  in 
the  town  of  Bolton.  "  Two  shops  are  mentioned  as  hav- 
ing been  occupied  by  Arkwright  when  he  lived  in  Bol- 
ton :  one  in  the  passage  leading  to  the  Old  Millstone  Inn, 
Deansgate ;  the  other,  a  small  shop  in  Churchgate.  The 
lead  cistern  in  which  his  customers  washed  after  being 
shaved  is  still  in  existence,  and  is  in  the  possession  of 
Mr.  Peter  Skelton,  of  Bolton."* 

About  1760  Arkwright  became  a  dealer  in  hair,  which 
he  collected  by  traveling  up  and  down  the  country,  and, 
having  dressed  the  hair,  he  sold  it  again  to  the  wig-mak- 
ers. He  kept  a  better  article  than  either  of  his  compet- 
itors in  the  same  trade,  and  he  had  a  profitable  secret 
method  of  dyeing  hair. 

Up  to  this  time  the  English  cotton  cloths  (called  cali- 
co from  Calicut  in  India,  the  place  of  their  production) 
had  only  the  weft  of  cotton,  the  warp,  or  longitudinal 
threads,  being  of  linen  ;  it  being  impossible,  by  any  means 
then-known,  to  spin  the  cotton  with  a  sufficiently  hard 
twist  to  be  used  as  a  warp.  The  raw  materials  were 
then  delivered  by  the  master-manufacturers  to  cottagers 

*  Life  and  Times  of  Samuel  Crompton.  Ev  Gilbert  J.  French.  1859. 
N  2 


298  ARKWRIGHT'S  INVENTIONS. 

living  in  the  villages  of  the  district,  who  both  carded  and 
spun  tne  cotton,  and  wove  the  cloth.  The  demand  for 
these  cottons  soon  became  so  great,  that,  although  there 
were  50,000  spindles  constantly  at  work  in  Lancashire 
alone,  each  occupying  an  individual  spinner,  they  could 
not  supply  the  quantity  of  thread  required.  To  remedy 
this  state  of  things,  several  ingenious  individuals  had 
thought  of  spinning  by  machinery  instead  of  by  the  one- 
thread  wheel.  A  Mr.  Wyatt,  of  Lichfield,  is  stated  to 
have  invented  a  spinning  apparatus  as  early  as  1733,  and 
had  factories  built  with  his  machines  both  at  Birming- 
ham and  Northampton :  but  these  undertakings  failed ; 
the  machines  perished,  and  no  model  or  description  of 
them  was  preserved.*  Wyatt' s  claim  to  the  invention 
has,  however,  been  disproved.  A  Mr.  Laurence  Earn- 
shaw,  of  Mottram  in  Cheshire,  in  1753,  invented  a  ma- 
chine to  spin  and  reel  cotton  at  one  operation,  which  he 
showed  to  his  neighbors,  and  then  destroyed  it,  through 
the  generous  apprehension  that  he  might  deprive  the 
poor  of  bread.f 

Arkwright  had  also  turned  his  attention  to  mechanics. 
His  first  effort  was  an  attempt  to  discover  the  perpetual 
motion ;  and  in  seeking  for  a  person  to  make  him  some 
wh'eels  for  a  project  of  this  kind,  he  got  acquainted  with 
one  Kay,  a  clockmaker  at  Warrington,  where  they  jointly 
devised  a  model  of  a  machine  for  spinning  cotton  thread. 
Next  year,  1768,  they  began  to  erect  this  machine  at 
Preston,  in  the  parlor  of  the  dwelling-house  attached  to 
the  Free  Grammar  School.  Arkwright  and  Kay,  how- 
ever, soon  left  Preston,  dreading  the  hostility  of  the  Lan- 
cashire people  to  their  attempt  to  introduce  spinning  by 
machinery.  They  next  removed  to  Nottingham,  where, 
wanting  capital,  Arkwright  took  his  model  to  Messrs. 
N^ed  and  Strutt,  stocking- weavers  of  that  place ;  and 
Mr.  Strutt,  being  a  man  of  scientific  acquirements,  was 
satisfied  of  the  great  value  of  the  proposed  machine,  and 
he  and  Mr.  Need  entered  into  partnership  with  Ark- 
wright, who,  in  1769,  took  out  a  patent  for  the  machine 
as  its  inventor. J  A  spinning-mill,  driven  by  horse-power, 

*  Manchester  Memoirs,  Second  Series,  vol.  iii. 

f  Paines'  History  of  Lancashire,  vol.  iii. 

j  It  is  related  that  when  Arkwright  applied  to  Mr.  Strutt,  his  ma- 


ARKWRIGHT'S  WATER-FRAME,  OR  THROSTLE.        299 

was  at  the  same  time  erected,  and  filled  with  the  frames, 
being  (unless  we  include  Wyatt's  at  Lichfield)  the  first 
work  of  the  kind  that  had  been  known  in  this  country. 
In  1771  Arkwright  and  his  partners  established  another 
mill  at  Cromford,  in  Derbyshire,  the  machinery  in  which 
was  set  in  motion  by  a  water-wheel ;  and  in  1775  he  took 
out  a  second  patent,  with  additions  to  his  original  appa- 
ratus.* 

The  most  important  of  Arkwright's  contrivances  was 
a  device  for  drawing  out  the  cotton  from  a  coarse  to  a 
finer  and  harder-twisted  thread,  and  so  rendering  it  fit  to 
be  used  for  warp  as  -well  as  weft.  This  was  most  ingen- 
iously managed  by  the  application  of  a  principle  which 
had  not  yet  been  introduced  in  any  other  mechanical  op- 
eration. The  cotton  was,  in  the  first  place,  drawn  off 
from  the  skewers  on  which  it  was  placed  by  one  pair  of 
rollers,  which  were  made  to  move  at  a  comparatively 
slow  rate,  and  which  formed  it  into  threads  of  a  first  or 
coarser  quality ;  but  at  a  little  distance  behind  the  first 
was  placed  a  second  pair  of  rollers,  revolving  three,  four, 
or  five  times  as  fast,  which  took  it  up  when  it  had  passed 
through  the  others,  the  effect  of  which  would  be  to  re- 
duce the  thread  to  a  degree  of  fineness  so  many  times 
greater  than  that  which  it  originally  had.  The  first  pair 
of  rollers  might  be  regarded  as  the  feeders  of  the  second, 
which  could  receive  no  more  than  the  others  sent  to 
them ;  and  that,  again,  could  be  no  more  than  these  oth- 
ers themselves  took  up  from  the  skewers.  As  the  sec- 
ond pair  of  rollers,  therefore,  revolved,  we  will  say,  five 
times  for  every  revolution  of  the  first  pair — or,  which  is 
the  same  thing,  required  for  their  consumption  in  a  given 
time  five  times  the  length  of  thread  that  the  first  did — 

chines  were  much  embarrassed  by  the  fibres  of  the  wool  sticking  to 
the  roller.  This  circumstance  greatly  annoyed  Mr.  Arkwright ;  and 
it  is  said  that  Mr.  Strutt  engaged  to  remove  the  evil  on  condition  of 
participating  in  the  profits  of  the  result.  They  repaired  to  the  mill, 
when  Mr.  Strutt,  taking  a  lump  of  chalk  out  of  his  pocket,  and  apply- 
ing it  to  the  roller,  the  sticking  was  instantly  prevented. 

*  In  Arkwright's  apparatus,  which  was  a  combination  of  the  card- 
ing and  spinning  machinery,  this  first  part  of  the  process  was  some- 
what modified ;  but  the  principle  of  the  two  pairs  of  rollers,  the  one 
revolving  faster  than  the  other,  which  forms  the  peculiarity  of  the  ma- 
chine, was  employed  as  here  described. 


300  SPINNING    BY    EOLLEES. 

they  could  obviously  obtain  so  much  length  by  drawing 
out  the  common  portion  of  cotton  into  thread  of  five 
times  the  original  fineness.  Nothing  could  be  more  beau- 
tiful or  more  effective  than  this  contrivance,  which,  with 
an  additional  provision  for  giving  the  proper  twist  to  the 
thread,  constitutes  the  water-frame,  or  throstle,  so  called 
from  its  being  originally  moved  by  water-power. 

Spinning  by  rollers  was  an  entirely  original  idea.  Ark- 
wright stated  that  he  accidentally  derived  the  first  hint 
of  his  invention  from  seeing  a  redrhot  iron  bar  elongated 
by  being  made  to  pass  between  rollers ;  and  though  there 
is  no  mechanical  analogy  between  that  operation  and  the 
process  of  spinning,  it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  that,  by 
reflecting  upon  it,  and  placing  the  subject  in  different 
points  of  view,  he  might  be  led  to  this  invention,  which 
he  particularly  claimed  as  his  own.  Of  other  machines 
included  in  his  patent  he  was  rather  the  imprpver  than 
the  inventor ;  and  the  original  spinning-machine  for  coarse 
thread,  the  Spinning-Jenny,  Arkwright  admitted  to  have 
been  first  conceived  by  Hargreaves. 

Other  parties  disputed  Arkwright's  property  in  his  in- 
ventions ;  his  patents  were  invaded  by  the  cotton-spin- 
ners, and  he  could  only  enforce  his  rights  by  long  and 
costly  litigation.  Doubtless,  to  him  alone  belongs  the 
merit^  both  of  having  combined  the  different  parts  of  the 
spinning  machinery,  of  having  first  brought  it  into  actual 
use  on  an  extensive  scale,  and  demonstrated  its  power 
and  value.  The  great  scene  of  his  operations  was  at 
Cromford,  in  Derbyshire,  about  twenty  miles  from  Man- 
chester, where  the  work-people  hailed  him  as  a  bene- 
factor, and  where  ^water-power  without  limit  was  found 
to  drive  his  machinery.  It  was  not,  however,  until  the 
lapse  of  five  years  from  their  erection  that  any  profit  was 
realized  by  the  works  at  Croni-ford.;  but  from  that  time 
Arkwright  grew  wealthy,  notwithstanding  his  patent  had 
been  canceled  by  law.  He  built  for  himself  a  stately 
castellated  mansion  amid  the  scenes  of  industry  where 
he  had  raised  up  his  own  fortune.  He  served  as  high- 
sheriff  of  Derbyshire  in  1786,  and  received  knighthood 
on  presenting  an  address  of  congratulation  to  King- 
George  III. 

Sir  Richard  Arkwright  died  at  Cromford  in  1792,  in 


ARKWBIGHT'S  COTTON-MILLS.  301 

his  sixtieth  year.  A  beautiful  monument  by  Chantrey 
has  been  erected  over  his  remains  in  Cromford  Chapel. 

To  the  close  of  his  life,  the  management  of  his  fac- 
tories was  his  daily  occupation,  and  even  amusement. 
He  scarcely  took  any  out-door  recreation,  but  employed 
his  time  either  in  superintending  the  daily  concerns  of 
these  establishments,  or  in  improving  his  machinery.  His 
wealth  increased  to  sueh  an  extent  that,  besides  possess- 
ing, exclusive  of  his  mill  property,  one  of  the  largest 
landed  estates  in  England,  he  presented  on  two  occasions 
each  of  his  ten  children  with  the  sum  of  ten  thousand 
pounds.  He  left  at  his  death  half  a  million  of  money. 

And  thus  it  was  that,  from  a  poor  barber,  Arkwright 
raised  himself  not  merely  to  rank  and  affluence,  but  to 
be  one  of  the  foremost  founders  of  a  new  branch  of 
national  industry,  and  in  a  wonderfully  short  space  of 
time  to  assume  the  very  first  place  among  the  manufac- 
turers of  his  country. 

Cromford  mills  are  delightfully  placed  on  the  Derwent, 
in  one  of  the  most  picturesque  dales  in  Derbyshire.  Near 
the  mills  is  Willersley  Castle,  where  Arkwright  lived  in 
princely  style.  The  mansion  commands  a  fine  prospect 
of  the  industrial  valley. 


Arkwright' s  Mills,  from  Cromford  Heights. 


302  THE    COTTON    MANUFACTURE. 


SAMUEL  CROMPTON  AND  THE  SPINNING-MULE. 

Hitherto  our  account  of  the  Cotton  manufacture  has 
been  chiefly  illustrated  by  the  inventions  of  Sir  Richard 
Arkwright;  contemporary  with  whom,  though  by  the 
present  generation  only  recognized  as  somewhat  ob- 
scurely connected  with  the  improvement  of  spinning  ma- 
chinery, was  SAMUEL  CKOMPTON.  "  It  is  scarcely  known 
that  his  discovery  gave  a  wonderful  impulse  to  the  in- 
dustry, and  consequently  to  the  wealth  and  population 
of  South  Lancashire,  causing  its  insignificant  villages  to 
attain  the  importance  of  large  and  populous  towns."* 

Samuel  Crompton  was  born  December  3,  1753,  of 
an  ancient  family,  traceable  to  the  time  of  Henry  III. 
Crompton's  parents  resided  at  Firwood,  near  Bolton, 
occupying  a  farm,  and,  as  was  the  custom  of  that  time, 
employing  their  leisure  hours  in  carding,  spinning,  and 
weaving.  They  removed  when  Samuel  was  five  years 
old  to  a  portion  of  the  neighboring  ancient  mansion  call- 
ed Hall-in-the-Wood.  The  boy  was  well  educated  at 
Bolton;  but  it  is  probable  that,  owing  to  his  mother's 
exigencies,  "his  little  legs  became  accustomed  to  the 
lo*om  almost  as  soon  as  they  were  long  enough  to  touch 
the  treadles."  At  the  age  of  sixteen  years  he  continued 
to  reside  with  his  mother,  occupied  at  the  loom,  and  at- 
tending an  evening  school  at  Bolton,  where  he  advanced 
his  knowledge  of  algebra,  mathematics,  and  trigonom- 
etry. For  six  years  previous  to  the  above  date,  the  in- 
creased demand  for  fine  cottons  led  to  a  great  scarcity 
of  yarn  for  weft ;  and  the  invention  of  Kay's  fly-shuttle, 
by  doubling  the  speed  of  the  weaver's  operations,  dis- 
turbed the  natural  balance  between  the  quantity  of  yarn 
spun  and  the  weavers'  demand  for  it. 

Such  was  the  scarcity  of  yarn  when,  in  1767,  Har- 

*  Life  and  Times  of  Samuel  Crompton,  by  Gilbert  J.  French,  1859  ; 
whence,  by  permission,  the  leading  data  of  this  sketch  are  derived. 
This  memoir  is  written  in  a  bold  and  manly  spirit,  befitting  the  sub- 
ject which  it  so  eloquently  rescues  from  neglect.  It  is  the  substance 
of  two  papers  read  to  the  members  of  the  Bolton  Mechanics'  Institu- 
tion by  Mr.  French,  who  has  generously  placed  at  the  Society's  dispos- 
al any  profits  that  may  arise  from  the  publication  of  this  edition  of  his 
work,  which,  we  are  happy  to  add,  was  sold  within  a  few  weeks, 


SAMUEL  CKOMPTON,  INVENTOR  OF  THE  SPINNING  MTJLB. 


THE  HALL-IN-THE-WOOD,  NEAR  BOLTON. 


THE    HALL-IN-THE-WOOD,  NEAR    BOLTON.  305 

greaves  invented  the  Jenny  (see  page  296).  "And  two 
years  afterward,  when  only  sixteen  years  of  age,  Samuel 
Crompton  spun  on  one  of  these  machines,  with  eight 
spindles,  the  yarn  which  he  afterward  wove  into  quilt- 
ing; and  thus  he  was  occupied  for  the  five  following 
years."  At  his  solitary  loom  in  the  old  Hall-in-the-Wood 
he  became  prematurely  a  thinker ;  and,  debarred  from 
company,  he  cultivated  a  taste  for  music,  which  led  to 
the  first  trial  of  his  mechanical  skill  in  making  a  violin, 
which  he  commenced  learning  to  play  upon.  He  was 
master  of  Hargreaves'  invention,  the  Jenny ;  and  he  was 
personally  known  to  Arkwright,  whose  reputation  as  an 
inventor  now  rang  through  Lancashire.  "This  Bolton 
barber,"  says  Mr.  French,  "  without  previous  experience 
as  a  spinner,  was  now,  in  1771  (Crompton  being  then 
eighteen  years  of  age),  building  his  famous  mill  at  Crom- 
ford,  in  Derbyshire,  and  already  obtaining  the  reputation 
of  great  Avealth ;  while  Samuel  was  passing  half  his  work- 
ing hours  in  piecing  up  the  broken  ends  of  the  bad  yarn, 
which  prevented  him  from  making  satisfactory  progress 
with  his  daily  stint  of  weaving — for  his  mother  insisted 
upon  a  certain  amount  of  work  being  finished  every  day. 
A  failure  inevitably  subjected  him  to  her  somewhat  sharp 
vituperation ;  and  if  he  succeeded  in  his  allotted  task,  it 
was  at  the  expense  of  so  much  time  lost  in  mending  the 
ever-breaking  ends  of  his  miserable  yarn,  that  none  re- 
mained for  his  darling  fiddle,  or  for  the  few  books  he  now 
desired  to  study." 

The  Hall-in-the-Wood  is  situated  about  a  mile  from 
Bolton,  on  elevated  rocky  ground,  around  which  sweeps 
the  Eagley  brook  or  river  ;  but  few  of  the  fine  old  trees 
remain  to  show  that  the  name  of  the  mansion  was  once 
entirely  appropriate.  The  building,  of  post  and  plaster 
work,  is  mostly  of  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century ;  but 
the  south  front  and  porch  are  of  stone,  and  the  latter 
bears  the  date  1648.  The  dining-hall,  and  the  room  in 
which  Crompton  worked,  now  occupied  as  a  bedroom, 
retain  their  original  handsome  windows  in  small  leaden 
quarries.  Here,  in  the  year  1774,  he  commenced  the 
construction  of  the  Spinning  Machine,  which  for  many 
years  was  known  as  "the  Hall-i'-th'-Wood  Wheels."  It 
took  him  five  entire  years  to  mature  his  improvement, 


306  CROMPTON'S  INVENTIVE  LABORS. 

during  which  time  he  worked  entirely  alone,  with  no  one 
in  his  confidence  to  whom  he  could  look  for  sympathy 
or  assistance ;  and  he  tells  us  that  he  succeeded  at  the 
expense  of  every  shilling  he  had  in  the  world.  All  this 
labor  was  in  addition  to  his  regular  every-day  work; 
he  toiled  late  and  early.  - "  Strange  and  unaccountable 
sounds,"  says  Mr.  French,  "  were  heard  in  the  old  Hall 
at  most  untimely  hours ;  lights  were  seen  in  unusual 
places ;  and  a  rumor  became  current  that  the  place  was 
haunted."  Samuel  was,  however,  soon  discovered  to  be 
himself  the  embodied  spirit  (of  invention)  which  had 
caused  so  much  fear  and  trouble  to  the  family.  His  dif- 
ficulties were  great,  and  the  tools  which  he  possessed 
insufficient  for  the  purpose ;  but,  by  devoting  every  shil- 
ling he  could  spare  to  the  purchase  of  the  requisite  tools, 
and  aided  by  his  clasp-knife,  to  which  he  is  said  to  have 
been  greatly  indebted,  he  at  length  triumphed.  It  is  re- 
lated that  Crompton  and  his  violin  were  frequently  em- 
ployed in  the  orchestra  of  the  Bolton  theatre  at  Is.  6d. 
each  night ;  "  but,  small  as  it  was,  that  payment  greatly 
assisted  him  in  procuring  the  tools  which  he  required  for 
his  mechanical  operations." 

In  our  account  of  previous  inventions  for  Cotton  Spin- 
ning, we  have  already  mentioned  Kay's  production  of 
the  fly-shuttle  in  1738  ;  "  and  in  the  same  year,"  says  Mr. 
French,  "  by  a  curious  and  interesting  coincidence,  and, 
BO  far  as  can  be  learned,  without  any  reference  to  the 
recent  improvement  in  weaving,  a  patent  was  obtained 
by  Louis  Paul  for  spinning  wool  and  cotton  by  passing 
previously-prepared  slivers  between  pairs  of  rollers  turn- 
ed with  different  degrees  of  velocity."  Mr.  Baines,  how- 
ever, whom  we  have  already  quoted,  stated  that  Wyatt, 
and  not  Paul,  was  the  inventor  of  spinning  by  rollers. 
This  opinion  remained  undisturbed  until  September, 
1858,  when  Mr.  Robert  Cole,  F.S.A.,  read  to  the  British 
Association  at  the  Leeds  meeting  a  communication  enti- 
tled "  Some  Account  of  Louis  Paul  and  his  invention  of 
the  Machine  for  spinning  Cotton  and  Wool  by  Rollers, 
and  his  claim  to  such  invention  to  the  exclusion  of  John 
Wyatt ;"  proving  very  satisfactorily  that  Louis  Paul  was 
the  original  inventor  of  the  method  of  spinning  by  rollers, 
and  that  John  Wyatt,  whose  family  have  claimed  the 


HIS    MUSLIN    WHEEL.  307 

credit  of  the  invention  for  him  (he  never  appears  to  have 
made  any  such  claim  himself),  had  really  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  the  invention,  though  he  certainly  had  a  pe- 
cuniary interest  in  working  it.  The  invention,  though 
wonderfully  ingenious,  and  supported  by  some  of  the  dis- 
tinguished men  of  the  time,  languished  and  died. 

It  next  appears  that  Highs,  or  Hays,  a  reed-maker  at 
Leigh,  took  up  the  plan  of  attempting  to  spin  by  rollers 
in  1767,  and  he  was  assisted  in  his  experiment  by  Kay, 
the  clockmaker,  but  with  little  success.  Next  appeared 
Arkwright,  who  is  said  to  have  adopted  the  plans  of 
Highs  and  Kay,  and  the  Spinning  Jenny  of  Hargreaves. 

Such  was  the  position  of  Cotton  Spinning,  when,  in 
1774,  Samuel  Crompton  commenced  the  experiments 
which  eventuated  in  his  If  all -in -the -Wood  Wheel,  or 
Muslin  Wheel,  because  its  capabilities  rendered  it  avail- 
able for  yarn  for  making  muslins  ;  and,  finally,  it  got  the 
name  of  the  Mule,  from  its  partaking  of  the  two  leading 
features  of  Arkwright's  machine  and  Hargreaves'  Spin- 
ning Jenny.  Crompton's  first  suggestion  was  to  intro- 
duce a  single  pair  of  rollers,  viz.,  a  top  and  a  bottom, 
which  he  expected  would  elongate  the  rove  by  pressure, 
like  the  process  by  which  metals  are  drawn  out,  and 
which  he  observed  in  the  wire-drawing  for  reeds  used  in 
the  loom.  In  this  he  was  disappointed,  and  afterward 
adopted  a  second  pair  of  rollers,  the  latter  pair  revolving 
at  a  slower  speed  than  the  former,  and  thus  producing  a 
draught  of  one  inch  in  three  or  four.  This  was  neither 
more  nor  less  than  a  modification  of  Mr.  Arkwright's 
roller-beam.  But  Crompton  assured  Mr.  Kennedy,  his 
nearest  friend,  that  when  he  constructed  his  machine  he 
knew  nothing  of  Arkwright's  discovery  ;*  and  the  rude- 
ness of  Crompton's  machine,  mostly  of  wood,  shows  that 
he  was  not  acquainted  with  Arkwright's  superior  rollers 
and  fixtures  in  iron,  and  their  connection  by  clock-work. 
Mr.  Kennedy  says : 

Crompton's  first  machine  contained  only  about  twenty  or  thirty 
spindles.  He  finally  put  dents  of  brass  reed-wire  into  his  under  rollers, 
and  thus  obtained  a  fluted  roller.  But  the  great  and  important  in- 
vention of  Crompton  was  his  spindle-carriage,  and  the  principle  of  the 
thread  having  no  strain  upon  it  until  it  was  completed.  The  carriage 

*  Paper  read  to  the  Literary  and  Philosophical  Society  of  Manches- 
ter in  1830. 


308  CROMPTON'S  SPINNING-MULE. 

with  the  spindles  could,  by  the  movement  of  the  hand  and  knee,  re- 
cede just  as  the  rollers  delivered  out  the  elongated  thread  in  a  soft 
state,  so  that  it  would  allow  of  a  considerable  stretch  before  the  thread 
had  to  encounter  the  stress  of  winding  on  the  spindle.  This  was  the 
corner-stone,  of  the,  merits  of  his  invention. 

Just  as  Crompton  had  completecfhis  first  Mule  in  1779, 
and  was  about  to  put  it  to  actual  work,  the  Blackburn 
spinners  and  weavers,  who  had  previously  driven  poor 
Hargreaves  from  his  home,  renewed  their  tumults,  and 
destroyed  every  jenny  round  Blackburn,  except  such  as 
had  less  than  twenty  spindles.  To  save  his  new  machine 
from  destruction,  Crompton  took  it  to  pieces,  and  con- 
cealed the  various  parts  in  a  loft  near  the  clock  in  the  old 
Hall.  There  they  remained  hid  for  many  weeks  ere  he 
dared  to  put  them  together  again ;  but  in  the  same  year 
the  wheel  was  completed,  and  the  yarn  spun  upon  it  used 
for  fine  muslins ;  and  one  of  the  earliest  results  of  this 
success  was  Crompton's  purchase  of  a  silver  watch  out 
of  the  wheel's  earnings.  In  1780  he  married,  and  the 
young  couple  went  to  reside  in  a  cottage  attached  to  the 
old  Hall ;  but  Crompton  continued  to  occupy  one  of  the 
large  rooms  in  the  mansion,  and  there  operated  upon  the 
Mule,  "  with  a  success  which  startled  the  manufacturing 
world  by  the  production  of  yarn  which,  both  in  fineness 
and  firmness,  had  hitherto  been  unattainable  by  any 
means  or  at  any  price."  Assisted  by  his  amiable  young 
wife,  he  industriously  spun  at  the  Hall,  with  the  greatest 
possible  privacy,  small  quantities  of  the  .much-coveted 
yarn,  producing  week  after  week  higher  counts  and  an 
improved  quality,  for  which  he  readily  obtained  his  own 
price.  The  supply,  however,  could  not  satisfy  one  hund- 
redth part  of  the  demand :  the  old  Hall  was  besieged  by 
cunning  persons,  who  came  not  only  to  purchase,  but 
also  to  get  at  the  mystery  of  the  wonderful  new  wheel. 
Admission  was  denied ;  when  many  climbed  up  to  the 
windows  outside  by  the  aid  of  harrows  and  ladders  to 
look  in  at  the  new  machine.  Crompton  blocked  the  in- 
truders out  with  a  screen ;  but  one  inquisitive  seeker  con- 
cealed himself  for  some  days  in  a  loft,  and  watched  Sam- 
uel at  work  by  means  of  a  gimlet-hole  pierced  through 
the  ceiling.  Even  Arkwright  traveled  sixty  miles  to  en- 
deavor to  discover  the  secret  of  the  new  wheel,  which  all 
but  eclipsed  his  water-frame. 


CBOMPTON'S  SPHSTNING-MULE.  309 

Crompton  now  found  it  impossible  to  retain  the  secret 
of  his  machine :  he  had  no  patent,  nor  the  means  of  pur- 
chasing one ;  when,  rather  than  destroy  the  mule,  he 
gave  it  to  the  public,  upon  condition  of  certain  "  manu- 
facturing friends"  paying  him  a  sum  of  money,  which 
did  not  exceed  £60 ;  yet  the  list  of  half-guinea  sub- 
scribers of  this  paltry  amount  contains  "  the  names  of 
many  Bolton  firms  now  of  great  wealth  and  eminence  as 
mule-spinners,  whose  colossal  fortunes  may  be  said  to 
have  been  based  upon  this  singularly  small  investment" 
(French).  The  money  received  merely  sufficed  to  re- 
place the  machine  which  Crompton  had  given  up;  for 
his  time,  study,  and  toil  he  received  not  a  shilling.  After 
the  secret  had  been  made  public,  many  persons  who  had 
promised  subscriptions  refused  to  pay,  and  even  de- 
nounced Crompton  as  an  impostor.  This  shameful 
treatment  made  him,  to  some  extent,  a  moody  and  mis- 
trustful man.  In  the  five  following  years  the  Mule  was 
generally  employed  for  fine  spinning  throughout  the 
manufacturing  districts  of  England  and  Ireland,  and  par- 
ticularly Scotland.  Before  1785  Crompton  removed  to 
a  farm-house  near  Bolton,  and  there  besides  farming,  he 
worked  secretly  at  his  machine  in  the  upper  story  of  his 
house.  Curious  visitors  still  came;  and  among  them 
was  Mr.  (afterward  the  first  Sir  Robert)  Peel,  who  at- 
tempted to  get  at  the  Mule  in  Crompton's  absence,  but 
was  defeated.  He  offered  the  inventor  a  lucrative  situa- 
tion, and  even  a  partnership,  in  his  establishment,  both 
which  Crompton  declined  to  accept. 

In  1800  a  subscription  was  opened  at  Manchester  to 
reward  Crompton,  but  it  did  not  exceed  £500.  With 
this  sum  he  rented  a  factory  story  in  Bolton,  and  there 
had  two  Mules,  with  the  power  to  turn  the  machinery. 
Crompton  now  toiled  onward :  he  submitted  his  inven- 
tion to  the  Royal  Society  and  the  Society  of  Arts,  but 
by  neither  was  it  entertained.  He  had  started  the 
stream  of  manufacturing  prosperity,  but  no  portion  of  it 
had  reached  the  poor  inventor.  In  the  hope  of  some  re- 
muneration, he  visited  the  manufacturing  districts  of 
England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  to  ascertain  the  results 
of  his  invention,  when  he  found  the  number  of  mule- 
spindles  in  use  to  be  4,600,000,  spinning  40,000,000  of 


310  NEGLECT    OF    CROMPTON. 

pounds  of  cotton  wool  in  a  year.  Armed  with  these 
data,  and  a  certificate  signed  by  many  manufacturing 
and  machine-making  firms,  Crompton  petitioned  Parlia- 
ment for  public  remuneration,  "  and,  after  much  delay, 
the  paltry  sum  of  £5000  was  granted  him."  In  1825  a 
memorial  was  presented  to  Parliament  for  a  second 
grant,  but  without  effect.  On  June  26, 1827,  Crompton 
died,  in  his  seventy-fourth  year,  and  was  followed  to  the 
grave  by  a  host  of  Bolton  worthies.  Yet,  in  the  next 
page  of  his  very  interesting  volume,  Mr.  French  tells  us, 

From  that  day  little  lias  been  said  or  thought  of  Samuel  Crompton. 
Men  have  been  content  to  employ  his  great  invention  for  their  indi- 
vidual profit  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  human  race,  but  the  memory  of 
the  inventor  has  passed  from  the  public  mind  almost  like  the  shadow 
of  a  summer  cloud.  The  older  manufacturers  of  the  country  have 
been  for  the  most  part  naturally  willing  to  forget  the  man  to  whom 
they  were  so  greatly  indebted,  because  they  could  not  remember  him 
without  taking  shame  to  themselves  for  the  injustice  and  ingratitude 
with  which  he  had  been  treated. 

Without  underrating  the  importance  of  other  inven- 
tions, it  may  safely  be  asserted  that  Crompton's  Mule  is 
the  fulcrum  which  sustains  that  mighty  lever,  the  Cotton 
Trade,  the  most  valuable  and  the  most  powerful  of  our 
national  resources.  4-S  the  Jenny  is  now  almost  disused, 
and  all  the  finer  yarns  are  spun  exclusively  upon  the 
Mule,  its  importance  and  value  continue  to  increase. 
During  eighty  years  the  principle  of  Crompton's  inven- 
tion has  remained  unchanged,  while  modifications,  im- 
provements, and  auxiliaries  have  increased  its  productive 
power  a  hundred-fold.  In  its  infancy  it  was  carefully 
tended  by  the  human  hand ;  then  it  was  nursed  by  water 
power ;  next  steam  lifted  the  water  back  again  to  dupli- 
cate its  work  in  turning  the  young  machinery.  But 
steam  was  not  long  employed  in  this  secondary  office ; 
and  as  the  powers  and  capabilities  of  the  steam-engine 
were  developed,  they  were  laid  hold  of  by  the  cotton- 
spinner,  and  riveted  to  his  machinery,  thus  raising  the 
art  to  a  stupendous  power. 

Meanwhile,  the  results  of  Crompton's  genius  have  been 
practically  commemorated  upon  the  site  of  his  invention. 
Near  the  Hall-in-the-Wood  rises  an  octagonal  chimney- 
shaft  366  feet  in  heighten  connection  with  steam-engines 
and  furnaces  in  a  huge  factory,  where  some  thousands  of 


CAKTWRIGHT'S  POWER-LOOM.  311 

men  and  boys  are  employed  in  making  mule-spinning 
machinery,  and  in  ,the  weekly  production  of  thousands 
of  mule-spindles.  The  old  Hall  has  become  the  veritable 
centre  of  the  existing  cotton -manufacturing  district. 
"Could  we,"  says  Mr. French,  "tie  a  cord  twenty  miles 
in  length  to  the  top  of  the  tall  chimney  that  marks  the 
spot,  and  sweep  it  round  the  country,  the  circle  thus 
formed  would  embrace  the  populous  towns  and  teeming 
villages  engaged  in  spinning  and  weaving  cotton :  they 
radiate  from  that  centre  with  compass-like  regularity, 
Manchester,  Preston,  Oldham,  and  Blackburn  being  the 
cardinal  points." 

To  this  small  spot  of  earth  (remarkable  only  the  other  day  for 
nothing  beyond  the  sterility  of  its  surface),  and  to  its  indefatigable 
inhabitants,  Providence  appears  to  have  assigned  the  particular  and 
special  duty  of  clothing  mankind.  In  furtherance  of  this  work,  they 
have  dragged  to  the  surface  much  of  the  mineral  wealth  which  it  con- 
tained, and  have  perforated  it  with  thirty  miles  of  subterranean  canals, 
and  countless  miles  of  buried  railways.  They  have  crusted  over  its 
surface  with  factories  and  mills.  Wealth,  which  can  scarcely  be 
reckoned,  is  represented  by  millions  of  spindles,  which,  with  their 
auxiliary  engines,  are  revolving  day  by  day.  The  land  on  which 
they  stand  has  been  quadrupled  in  value.  Eailways  spread  over  it 
like  a  close  net-work  of  iron ;  and  it  is  covered  with  a  conglomerated 
mass  of  towns  and  villages,  so  large  and  so  closely  set  together  that 
in  many  instances  their  longer  streets  meet  each  other,  and  populous 
places  said  to  be  seven  miles  asunder  are  really  connected  by  continu- 
ous rows  of  gas-lights. 

Many  great  and  active  minds  have  been  at  work  to  produce  this 
unprecedented  result ;  but  to  one,  more  than  all  others  collectively,  it 
is  due.  It  was  the  mind  of  Samuel  Crompton  which,  under  Prov- 
idence, vivified  this  crowded  area,  and  now  fills  it  with  a  vitality  not 
the  less  true  that  its  action  is  unseen  and  unacknowledged. — FRENCH'S 
Life  and  Times  of  Samuel  Crompton. 


DR.  CARTWRIGHT  AND  THE  POWER-LOOM. 

This  stupendous  weaving-machine,  a  crowning  achieve- 
ment of  the  Cotton  Manufacture,  we  owe  to  the  genius 
of  Edmund  Cartwright,  born,  in  1743,  at  Marnham,  in 
Nottinghamshire.  He  was  educated  for  the  Church  in 
the  University  of  Oxford,  and  published  a  volume  of 
poems  while  yet  a  young  man.  He  had  reached  his  for- 
tieth year  before  he  had  given  any  attention  to  mechanics. 


312  POWER-LOOMS. 

Happening,  in  1784,  to  be  at  Matlock,  in  the  company  of 
some  gentlemen  of  Manchester,  he  maintained  the  prac- 
ticability of  inventing  a  machine  to  weave  the  vast  addi- 
tional quantity  of  cotton  spun  by  Arkwright's  machinery, 
and  this  Cartwright  asserted  was  not  a  whit  less  prac- 
ticable than  the  construction  of  the  Automaton  Chess- 
player then  exhibiting  in  London.  Soon  afterward  it 
occurred  to  Cartwright  that,  as  in  plain  weaving,  accord- 
ing to  the  conception  he  then  had  of  the  business,  there 
could  be  only  three  movements  to  follow  each  other  in 
succession,  there  could  be  little  difficulty  in  producing 
and  repeating  them.  He  then  employed  a  carpenter  and 
smith  to  construct  for  him  upon  this  principle  a  machine, 
and  getting  a  weaver  to  put  in  the  warp,  to  his  great  de- 
light a  piece  of  cloth  was  the  produce.  The  warp  was 
laid  perpendicularly ;  the  reed  fell  with  a  force  of  at  least 
half  a  hundred-weight  and  the  springs  which  threw  the 
shuttle  were  strong  enough  to  have  thrown  a  Congreve 
rocket.  Conceiving  this  to  be  a  valuable  invention,  in 
1785  Cartwright  secured  it  by  patent.  He  then  conde- 
scended to  see  how  other  persons  wove  (for  he  had  never 
before  seen  a  loom),  when  he  was  astonished  at  their 
easy  modes  of  operation  compared  with  his  powerful 
machine,  which  he  did  not  patent  till  1787. 

Some  time  after,  a  manufacturer,  on  seeing  Cartwright' s 
first  loom  at  work,  observed  that,  wonderful  as  was  the 
inventor's  mechanical  skill,  he  would  be  baffled  in  weav- 
ing patterns  in  checks,  i.  6.,  combining  in  the  same  web 
a  pattern  or  fancy  figure  with  the  crossing  colors  to  form 
the  check.  Cartwright  made  no  reply  to  the  manufac- 
turer's observation,  but  some  weeks  after  showed  him 
a  piece  of  muslin  beautifully  woven  in  checks  by  ma- 
chinery. 

After  this  Dr.  Cartwright  made  some  valuable  im- 
provements in  the  combing  of  wool  by  machinery,  in 
rope-making,  and  other  departments  of  agriculture  and 
manufactures.  Even  the  steam-engine  engaged  his  at- 
tention ;  and  he  used  frequently  to  tell  his  son  that,  if  he 
lived  to  be  a  man,  he  would  see  both  ships  and  land- 
carriages  impelled  by  steam.  As  early  as  1793  he  con- 
structed a  model  of  a  steam-engine,  attached  to  a  barge, 
which  he  explained,  in  the  presence  of  his  family,  to 


CALICO-PBINTING    AND    THE  PEELS.  313 

Robert  Fulton,  whose  zeal  and  activity  afterward,  as  is 
well  known,  perfected  the  project  of  steam  navigation  in 
America.  Even  so  late  as  1823,  Dr.  Cartwright,  then  in 
his  seventy-ninth  year,  contrived  a  plan  of  propelling 
land-carriages  by  steam. 

Dr.  Cartwright  was  defrauded  of  the  pecuniary  profits 
from  his  great  invention  of  the  power-loom  by  persons 
who  devised  contrivances  for  the  same  purpose  slightly 
different  from  his.  A  manufactory  containing  500  of 
Cartwright's  machines  w^as  destroyed  by  fire  almost  im- 
mediately after  it  was  built.  On  these  and  other  ac- 
counts, the  power-loom  only  began  to  be  extensively  in- 
troduced about  1801,  the  year  in  which  Cartwright's 
patent  expired.  He  was,  however,  in  some  degree  sub- 
sequently compensated  by  a  Parliamentary  grant  of 
£10,000. 

Power-looms  were  not  immediately  introduced  into 
factories.  They  remained  an  unprofitable  speculation 
until  it  was  discovered,  in  1803,  that  the  warp  might  be 
dressed  before  being  put  into  the  loom,  and  the  service 
of  the  man  employed  for  that  purpose  dispensed  with. 
The  construction  of  the  machine,  and  the  method  of 
dressing,  have  been  improved  since  that  time,  and  cloth 
is  now  woven %by  the  help  of  steam  with  a  rapidity  and 
to  an  extent  formerly  unknown. 

A  steam-engine  of  forty  or  sixty  horse-power  gives 
motion  to  thousands  of  rollers,  spindles,  and  bobbins  for 
spinning  yarns,  and  works  four  or  five  hundred  looms 
besides.  This  gigantic  spinner  and  weaver  needs  very 
little  assistance  from  man.  It  undertakes,  and  faithfully 
discharges,  all  the  heavy  work  of  putting  shafts,  wheels, 
and  pulleys  in  motion,  of  throwing  the  shuttle,  working 
the  treadles,  driving  home  the  weft,  and  turning  round 
the  warp  and  cloth  beams.  One  man  may  now  do  as 
much  work  as  two  or  three  hundred  ninety  years  ago. 


CALICO-PRINTING  AND  THE  RISE  OF  THE  PEELS. 

The  process  of  Calico-printing  is  not  confined  to  cot- 
ton cloth,  as  the  former  term  would  lead  us  to  suppose ; 

O 


314  CALICO-PKINTING. 

it  is  applied  also  to  linen,  silk,  and  woolen  cloth.  The 
art  is  supposed  to  have  originated  in  India,  and  to  have 
been  known  in  that  country  for  a  very  long  period.  From 
a  passage  in  Pliny's  Natural  History,  it  is  evident  that 
Calico-printing  was  understood  and  practiced  in  Egypt 
in  his  time,  but  was  unknown  in  Italy.  "  There  exists," 
says  Pliny,  "  in  Egypt  a  wonderful  method  of  dyeing. 
The  white  cloth  is  stained  in  various  places,  not  with 
dye-stuffs,  but  with  substances  which  have  the  property 
of  absorbing  (fixing)  colors.  These  applications  are  not 
visible  upon  the  cloth ;  but  when  the  pieces  are  dipped 
in  a  hot  caldron  containing  the  dye,  they  are  drawn  out 
an  instant  after  dyed.  The  remarkable  circumstance  is, 
that  though  there  be  only  one  dye  in  the  vat,  yet  differ- 
ent colors  appear  on  the  cloth ;  nor  can  the  colors  be 
again  removed."  This  description  of  Pliny  evidently 
applies  to  Calico-printing.  It  is  little  more  than  a  cen- 
tury and  three  quarters  since  the  art  was  transferred  from 
India  to  Europe,  and  little  more  than  a  century  and  a 
quarter  since  it  was  first  understood  in  Great  Britain, 
where,  by  the  application  of  machinery  and  improved 
chemical  processes,  the  rapidity  of  the  execution,  and  the 
beauty,  and  variety,  and  fastness  or  the  colors  are  un- 
equaled.  In  this  triumph  of  art  stand  pre-eminent  the 
family  of  the  Peels. 

At  Bamber  Bridge,  about  the  year  1763,  the  art  and 
mystery  of  Calico-printing  in  Lancashire  was  first  at- 
tempted by  the  Claytons.  Near  Knuydon  Brook,  about 
two  miles  east  of  Blackburn,  there  lived  a  tall,  robust 
man,  whose  ordinary  dress  was  a  woolen  apron,  a  calf- 
skin waistcoat,  and  wooden-soled  clogs,  and  whose  grisly 
hair  was  of  a  reddish  color ;  he  owned  forty  acres  of 
poor  grass-land,  and  three  of  his  sons  worked  each  at  a 
loom  in  the  dwelling-house.  About  1Y65,  one  of  these 
sons  chanced  to  spoil  in  the  weaving  a  piece  of  cloth 
made  of  linen  and  thread;  it  was  therefore  unsalable, 
and  the  father  took  the  spoiled  cloth  to  the  Claytons  at 
Bamber  Bridge,  requesting  to  have  it  printed  of  a  pat- 
tern for  kerchiefs,  which  was  done,  and  the  articles  were 
worn  by  the  family.  The  high  price  charged  for  print- 
ing this  piece  of  cloth  induced  the  owner  to  attempt  the 
art  himself,  which  he  did  in  a  secret  apartment  of  his 


THE    COTTON    MANUFACTURE.  315 

house  at  Peel  Fold,  the  name  of  the  above-mentioned 
forty  acres  of  grass-land.  The  experimenter  was  Robert 
Peel,  father  of  the  first  Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  great  calico- 
printer  of  Bury  in  Lancashire,  and  of  Fazely,  in  Stafford- 
shire. 

The  first  successful  experiment  was  a  "Parsley-leaf," 
which  Peel  engraved  upon  a  pewter  plate  and  transfer- 
red in  color  to  a  piece  of  cloth ;  and,  as  this  experiment 
was  made  in  the  absence  of  Peel's  family,  Mrs.  Milton,  a 
next-door  neighbor,  performed  the  calendering  process 
with  a  flat  smoothing-iron.  It  was  requisite  that,  in  ad- 
dition to  a  sharply-defined  vivid  impression  of  the  pat- 
tern, the  mordant  should  so  bite-in  the  colors  that  they 
should  resist  the  dissolving  action  of  soap  and  water.  In 
this,  too,  the  experiment  succeeded  to  admiration ;  and 
"Parsley  Peel,"  as  he  was  afterward  called,  exclaimed, 
with  a  shout  of  exclamation,  that  he  was  "  a  made  man." 
The  women  of  the  family  ironed  the  pieces  of  cloth  in 
the  secret  room,  to  prevent  prying  neighbors  seeing  what 
they  did.  But  this  Robert  Peel  did  more :  he  was  the 
first  person  to  supersede  the  hand-carding  of  cotton  wool, 
and  this  he  did  by  using  the  cards,  one  fixed  in  a  block 
of  wood,  and  the  other  slung  from  hooks  fixed  in  a  beam, 
where  they  remained  in  the  kitchen  beams  at  Peel  Fold 
in  1850.  Peel's  carding-machines  were  broken  by  a  mob 
of  persons  who  came  from  Blackburn  to  Peel  Fold  for 
that  purpose,  and  they  afterward  destroyed  his  works  at 
Althain.  Peel  was  at  length  driven  out  of  the  county 
by  the  violence  of  his  neighbors,  and  took  refuge  at  Bur- 
ton-on-Trent,  in  Staffordshire.  The  son  of  this  humble 
inventor,  the  first  Sir  Robert  Peel,  established  his  print- 
works at  Bury ;  and  in  the  neighborhood  was  born  his 
son,  the  great  statesman,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  whose  statue 
has  been  set  up  in  the  market-place  of  the  town  of  Bury. 

To  detail  fully  the  results  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture, 
and  how  largely  it  has  contributed  to  the  financial  and 
national  greatness  of  England,  would  fill  a  large  volume. 
Its  salient  points  have  been  thus  glanced  at  by  Mr.  Hen- 
ry Ashworth,  in  a  paper  read  to  the  Society  of  Arts  in 
1858. 

The  origin  of  the  uses  of  Cotton  is  very  remote.    Its 


316  COTTON-SPINNING   MACHINERY. 

production  over  many  parts  of  the  earth  is  spontaneous, 
and  for  3000  years  it  has  been  wrought  into  garments  by 
the  people  of  India.  This  knowledge  was  also,  at  a  very 
early  period,  possessed  by  the  people  of  Egypt  and  other 
Eastern  countries.  The  Egyptian  looms  (says  Wilkin- 
son) were  famed  for  their  tine  cotton  fabrics,  and  many 
of  these  were  worked  with  the  needle  in  patterns  in 
brilliant  colors,  but  some  were  woven  in  the  piece.  Of 
these  last  were  the  cotton  fabrics  with  blue  borders,  some 
of  which  are  in  the  Louvre :  though  their  date  is  uncer- 
tain, they  suffice  to  show  that  the  manufacture  was  Egyp- 
tian ;  and  the  many  dresses  painted  on  the  monuments 
of  the  eighteenth  dynasty  prove  that  the  most  varied 
patterns  were  used  by  the  Egyptians  more  than  3000 
years  ago,  as  they  were  at  a  later  period  by  the  Baby- 
lonians. In  Spain,  Cotton  was  known  about  the  tenth 
century,  and  eventually  it  found  its  way  to  England. 
The  Genoese  were  the  first  to  supply  this  country  with 
the  raw  material,  probably  from  the  Levant ;  and  the 
Flemish  emigrants  are  thought  to  have  introduced  the 
requisite  skill  to  use  it.  Except,  however,  for  candle- 
wicks,  for  which  use  it  was  imported  during  the  Middle 
Ages,  cotton  wool  was  not  employed  as  a  material  for 
manufactures  very  long  before  the  year  1641,  when  Man- 
chester purchased  cotton  wool  from  Cyprus  and  Smyrna, 
with  which  to  make  fustians  and  dimities  for  home  con- 
sumption and  exportation. 

The  arts  of  Spinning  and  Weaving  appear  among  the 
earliest  inventions  of  our  race.  They  are  mentioned  in 
the  Scriptures,  in  the  Homeric  poems,  and  by  Herodotus, 
Strabo,  Arrian,  Pliny,  and  other  early  historians.  Yet, 
strange  as  it  may  appear,  in  past  ages  we  find  that  no 
mention  is  made  of  any  improved  process.  It  would 
appear  to  have  been  reserved  to  modern  times,  and  to 
the  people  of  Lancashire,  to  subvert  the  old  rustic  con- 
trivances, and  to  substitute  the  mechanical  inventions  of 
Hargreaves,  Arkwright,  and  Crompton  as  the  basis  of  a 
manufacturing  system.  We  owe  it  to  the  genius  of  these 
inventors,  subsequently  aided  by  Watt,  and  carried  into 
practical  operation  by  the  enterprising  efforts  of  other 
men,  that  the  previously  obscure  and  humble  pretensions 
of  cotton  have  been  raised  from  insignificance,  and  in- 


PROGRESS    OF    COTTON-SPINNING.  317 

vested  with  an  importance  truly  national ;  that,  along 
with  the  progress  of  this  manufacture,  our  population 
has  increased  beyond  any  previously-conceived  limits, 
the  bounds  of  our  industrial  pursuits  have  been  im- 
mensely enlarged,  and  articles  of  clothing  have  been  ren- 
dered abundant  and  cheap.  Mr.  Porter,  in  his  Progress 
of  the  Nation,  says,  "It  is  to  the  spinning-jenny  and  the 
steam-engine  that  we  must  look,  as  having  been  the  true 
moving  powers  of  our  fleets  and  armies,  and  the  chief 
support  also  of  a  long-continued  agricultural  prosperity." 

Among  the  results  of  Cotton-Spinning  Machinery,  the 
diminution  of  price  is  as  extraordinary  as  the  fineness  of 
the  fabric.  The  raw  material  is  now  brought  from  India, 
and  manufactured  into  cloths  in  England,  which,  after 
being  returned  to  India,  are  actually  sold  there  cheaper 
than  the  produce  of  the  native  looms. 

In  Cotton  Spinning,  such  is  the  economy  of  labor  in- 
troduced by  the  use  of  machinery,  that  one  man  and  four 
children  will  spin  as  much  yarn  as  was  spun  by  six  hund- 
red men  and  fifty  girls  eighty  years  ago.  And  in  the 
present  day  Cotton  is  carded,  spun,  and  woven  into  cloth 
in  the  same  factory;  these  different  operations  being 
performed  by  machinery,  the  several  parts  of  which  are 
all  set  in  motion  by  a  single  steam-engine. 

By  these  combined  agencies,  the  actual  value  of  the  Cotton  Manu- 
facture, which  in  1787  was  estimated  at  £3,304,371,  rose  in  1833  to 
£31,338,693,  according  to  Mr.  Baines,  and  the  capital  employed  in 
the  manufacture  was  £34, 000, 000 ;  while  Mr.  M'Culloch,  in  the  Com- 
mercial Dictionary  (1849),  gives  £30,000,000  as  the  value  of  the  goods 
annually  made,  and  £47,000,000  as  the  estimate  of  the  capital  em- 
ployed. The  reports  of  the  cotton  manufacture  of  the  United  King- 
dom amounted  in  1849  to  £26,775,135,  and  in  1858  to  £33,421,843. 
Mr.  Baines  in  1833  estimated  the  number  of  persons  employed  at 
237,000,  supporting  1,500,000  by  upward  of  £6,000,000  of  annual 
wages;  whereas,  in  1849,  Mr.  M'Culloch  calculates  that  542,000 
spinners,  weavers,  bleachers,  etc.,  and  80,000  engineers,  machine- 
makers,  smiths,  masons,  joiners,  etc.,  were  employed  at  annual  wages 
amounting  to  £17,000,000  for  622,000  workmen.  The  development 
from  1849  to  1859  has  proceeded  at  a  rate  at  least  as  great  as  that 
which  preceded. — SIR  J.  KAY  SHUTTLE  WORTH. 

To  these  notices  of  British  Cotton  Manufacture  should 
be  added  some  account  of  the  beautiful  products  of  the 
Indian  art.  Dr.  Royle  pictures  the  native  woman  spin- 
ning thread  for  those  wonderful  fabrics  to  which  the 
names  of  "  dew  $f  night,"  "  running  water,"  are  figura- 


318  THE   COTTON-GIN. 

lively  applied.  He  describes  her  first  carding  her  cotton 
with  the  jawbone  of  a  boalee  fish ;  then  separating  the 
seeds  by  a  small  iron  roller,  worked  backward  and  for- 
ward on  a  flat  board ;  then  with  a  small  bone  reducing 
it  to  the  state  of  a  downy  fleece ;  and  finally  working  it 
into  thread  in  the  warm,  moist  atmosphere  of  a  tropical 
morning  or  evening,  sometimes  over  a  shallow  vessel  of 
water,  the  evaporation  from  which  helps  to  impart  the 
necessary  moisture.  Her  spindle  is  delicately  made  of 
iron,  with  a  ball  of  clay  attached,  to  give  it  the  requisite 
weight  in  turning ;  and  it  revolves  on  a  piece  of  hard 
shell,  imbedded  in  another  lump  of  clay  to  avoid  friction. 
In  spite  of  her  delicate  fingers  and  all  her  Old  World  in- 
genuity, the  ruthless  Manchester  manufacturer,  with  his 
mules  and  Australian-grown  cotton,  hastens  to  supersede 
her ;  and  so,  one  after  another,  die  out  the  arts  of  our 
older  civilization,  leaving  to  the  governed  and  the  gov- 
ernors of  the  East  the  mighty  task  of  founding  a  new 
system,  and  new  means  of  employment,  upon  the  wreck 
left  by  the  conquests  of  machinery  and  steam. 

The  weaving  art  is  similarly  primitive  in  India ;  but 
the  very  fine  muslins  are  viewed  as  curiosities,  and  made 
in  small  quantities,  so  that  their  use  is  limited  almost 
exclusively  to  the  princes  of  the  land. 

Note. — The  first  operation  to  be  performed  in  Cotton,  after  it  is 
carried  from  the  field,  is  to  cleanse  it  from  the  seeds.  Cotton  was 
long  cultivated  in  America  under  the  serious  disadvantage  that  the 
whole  crop  was  to  be  cleansed  of  its  seeds  by  hand.  In  1795  Eli 
Whitney  of  Massachusetts  invented  the  machine  known  as  the  Cotton- 
gin,  by  which  the  seeds  could  be  extracted  at  an  infinite  saving  of  la- 
bor and  expense ;  and  this  invention  gave  an  impetus  to  the  cultiva- 
tion in  our  Southern  States  which  has  brought  the  crop  up  from 
189,316  pounds  in  1791  to  2,000,000,000  in  1859.  Gins  are  of  two 
kinds.  The  Roller-gin  consists  essentially  of  two  small  cylinders  re- 
volving in  contact,  or  nearly  so,  with  each  other.  The  cotton  is  drawn 
between  these  rollers,  while  the  seeds,  being  too  large  to  pass,  are  left 
behind,  and  fall  out  on  one  side.  The  Saw-gin,  invented  by  Mr. 
Whitney,  is  intended  for  those  sorts  of  cotton  the  seeds  of  which  ad- 
here too  strongly  to  be  separated  by  the  former  method.  It  consists 
of  a  receiver,  having  one  side  covered  with  strong  parallel  wires,  placed 
like  those  of  a  cage  and  about  an  eighth  of  an  inch  apart.  Between 
these  wires  enter  an  equal  number  of  circular  saws,  revolving  on  a 
common  axis.  The  teeth  of  these  saws  entangle  the  cotton  and  draw 
it  out  through  the  grating  of  wires,  while  the  seeds  are  prevented  by 
their  size  from  passing.  The  cotton  thus  extricated  is  swept  off  from 
the  teeth  of  the  saws  by  a  revolving  cylindrical  brush,  and  the  seeds 
fall  out  at  the  bottom  of  the  receiver. — Am.  Ed.* 


JOHN  LOMBE  AND  THE  FIEST  SILK- 
THBOWING  MILL  IN  ENGLAND. 

To  the  Emperor  Justinian  we  owe  the  introduction 
into  Europe  of  the  labors  of  the  silk- worm,  which,  until 
his  time,  had  been  wholly  confined  to  China.  The  means 
by  which  the  secret  of  obtaining  silk  was  conveyed  to 
the  emperor  displayed  furtive  ingenuity,  which  bears 
some  analogy  to  the  stratagem  by  which  the  manufacture 
was  conveyed  to  England.  It  appears  that  two  Persian 
monks,  employed  as  missionaries  from  India,  having  pen- 
etrated into  China, "  here,  amid  their  pious  occupations, 
viewed  with  a  curious  eye  the  common  dress  of  the  Chi- 
nese, the  manufactures  of  silk,  and  the  myriads  of  silk- 
worms, whose  education,  either  on  trees  or  in  houses,  had 
once  been  considered  the  labor  of  queens.  They  soon 
discovered  that  it  was  impracticable  to  transplant  the 
short-lived  insect ;  but  that  in  the  egg  a  numerous  prog- 
eny might  be  preserved,  and  multiplied  in  a  distant  cli- 
mate." On  their  return  to  the  West,  instead  of  commu- 
nicating the  knowledge  they  had  acquired  to  their  own 
countrymen,  they  proceeded  on  to  Constantinople,  and 
there  imparted  to  Justinian  the  secret  hitherto  so  well 
preserved  by  the  Chinese,  that  silk  was  produced  by  a 
species  of  worm ;  and  they  added  that  the  eggs  might 
be  successfully  transported,  and  the  insects  propagated 
in  his  dominions.  They  likewise  explained  to  the  em- 
peror the  modes  of  preparing  and  manufacturing  the  slen- 
der filament — mysteries  hitherto  altogether  unknown,  or 
but  imperfectly  understood  in  Europe.  By  the  promise 
of  a  great  reward,  the  monks  were  induced  to  return  to 
China ;  and  there,  with  much  difficulty,  they  succeeded 
in  obtaining  a  quantity  of  silk-worms'  eggs ;  these  they 
concealed  hi  a  hollow  cane,  and  at  length,  in  the  year 
552,  conveyed  them  in  safety  to  Constantinople.  The 
eggs  were  hatched  in  the  proper  season  by  the  warmth 
of  manure,  and  the  worms  were  fed  with  the  leaves  of 


320  EABLY    SILK    CULTURE. 

the  wild  mulberry-tree.  These  worms  in  due  time  spun 
their  silk,  and  propagated,  under  the  careful  attendance 
of  the  monks,  who  also  instructed  the  Romans  in  the 
whole  process  of  manufacturing  their  production. 

The  insects  thus  produced  were  the  progenitors  of  all 
the  generations  of  silk-worms  which  have  since  been  rear- 
ed in  Europe  and  the  western  parts  of  Asia — of  the  count- 
less myriads  whose  constant  and  successive  labors  are 
engaged  in  supplying  a  great  and  still  increasing  de- 
mand. A  caneful  of  eggs  of  an  Oriental  insect  thus  be- 
came the  means  of  establishing  a  manufacture  which  fash- 
ion and  luxury  had  already  rendered  important,  and  of 
saving  vast  sums  annually  to  European  nations,  which, 
in  this  respect,  had  been  so  long  dependent  on,  and  com- 
pelled to  submit  to  the  exactions  of,  their  Oriental  neigh- 
bors. Justinian,  however,  took  the  infant  manufacture 
into  his  own  hands,  made  it  an  imperial  monopoly,  arid 
raised  the  prices  of  silk  higher  than  those  which  he  had 
formerly  prohibited  as  excessive,  so  that  an  ounce  of  the 
fabric  could  not  be  obtained  under  the  price  of  six  pieces 
of  gold.  Thus  the  emperor  proved  any  thing  but  a  free- 
trader when  he  had  obtained  the  secret.  However,  the 
rearing  and  manufacture  did  not  long  remain  merely  an 
imperial  prerogative,  but  were  extended  to  Greece,  and 
particularly  in  the  Peloponnesus.  The  Venetians  opened 
commercial  relations  with  the  Greek  Empire,  and  con- 
tinued for  many  centuries  the  channel  for  supplying  the 
western  parts  of  Europe  with  silks,  which  were  now  high- 
ly prized ;  for  in  the  year  790  the  Emperor  Charlemagne 
sent  two  silken  vests  to  Offa,  King  of  Mercia.  The  Ro- 
man territories  continued  to  supply  most  parts  of  Eu- 
rope until  Roger  I.,  King  of  Sicily,  upon  his  invasion  of 
the  territories  of  the  Greek  Empire,  led  into  captivity  a 
considerable  number  of  silk-weavers,  whom  he  compul- 
sorily  settled  in  Palermo,  obliging  them  to  teach  his  sub- 
jects their  art ;  and  in  twenty  years  the  silks  of  Sicily 
had  become  famous. 

The  knowledge  of  the  several  processes  spread  over 
Italy,  and  was  carried  into  Spain,  but  it  was  not  until  the 
reign  of  Francis  I.  that  the  silk  manufacture  took  root  in 
France ;  and  at  this  date,  even  our  magnificent  Henry 
VIII.  could  only  obtain  a  pair  of  silk  stockings  for  gala- 


SILK-THKOWING   ESTABLISHED   IN   ENGLAND.         321 

days  from  Spain.  His  daughter  Elizabeth  was  presented 
by  her  silk-woman  with  a  pair  of  English-knit  black  silk 
stockings ;  but  the  manufacture  in  England  did  not  make 
much  progress  in  her  reign  until  1585,  when  many  of  the 
silk  manufacturers  of  Antwerp  fled  to  England  from  the 
persecutions  of  the  Duke  of  Parma,  then  governor  of  the 
Spanish  Netherlands.  Near  the  close  of  his  reign,  Eliz- 
abeth's successor,  James  I.,  encouraged  a  London  mer- 
chant to  bring  from  the  Continent  of  Europe  some  silk 
throwsters,  silk  dyers,  and  broad  weavers ;  and  a  begin- 
ning was  made  in  the  manufacture  of  raw  silk  into  broad 
silk  fabrics,  which  increased  so  rapidly  that,  in  1629,  the 
Silk  Throwsters  of  London  were  incorporated,  and  the 
trade  had  its  dye,  called  "London  black."  In  1661,  the 
Company  of  Silk  Throwsters  in  London  employed  above 
40,000  men,  women,  and  children.  The  revocation  of 
the  Edict  of  Nantes  in  1685  compelled  Protestant  mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  and  artificers  to  emigrate  from 
France  in  great  numbers,  when  about  70,000  reached  En- 
gland and  Ireland,  and  there  established  such  seats  of 
manufacture  as  that  of  Spitalfields,  in  silk  of  the  highest 
styles  of  art  and  ingenuity  of  fabric  then  known.  In 
1713,  the  petition  of  the  Weavers'  Company  to  Parlia- 
ment at  the  peace  of  Utrecht  against  the  commercial 
treaty  with  France  represents  the  silk  manufacture  as 
twenty  times  greater  in  amount  than  it  had  been  in  1664, 
and  that  it  had  caused  a  great  exportation  of  woolen  and 
other  manufactured  goods  to  Turkey  and  Italy,  whence 
the  raw  silk  was  imported. 

Up  to  the  year  1718,  however,  the  whole  of  the  silk 
used  in  England,  for  whatever  purpose,  was  imported 
"  thrown,"  i.  e.,  formed  into  threads  of  various  kinds  and 
twists.  In  1702  a  Mr.  Crotchet  had  attempted  to  estab- 
lish the  silk-throwing  trade  in  a  small  mill  which  he  built 
at  Derby,  but,  from  defects  in  his  machinery  and  other 
difficulties,  he  was  soon  compelled  to  abandon  his  proj- 
ect. In  1715,  John  Lombe,  whose  name  will  always  be 
remembered  with  veneration  in  connection  with  the  Silk 
Trade,  resolved  upon  visiting  Italy,  and  acquiring,  at  any 
risk  and  any  cost,  a  knowledge  of  the  process  adopted 
in  that  country,  and  of  introducing  it  to  England.  Hav- 
ing well  matured  his  plan,  he  started  on  his  enterprise. 

O  2 


322 

On  reaching  Italy,  he  found  difficulties  greater  than  he 
had  anticipated;  for  the  jealousy  of  the  Italians  guarded 
their  secret  with  the  most  watchful  care.  At  Piedmont, 
finding  that  an  examination  of  the  silk  machinery  and 
processes  was  strictly  prohibited,  and  failing  to  gain 
open  admission  to  the  works,  he  bribed  some  of  the 
work-people,  and  by  their  connivance,  in  the  disguise  of 
a  common  workman,  he  made  several  secret  visits  to  the 
mills,  and  at  each  time  carefully  noted  down  every  thing 
he  saw,  and  made  sketches  of  parts  of  the  machinery,  so 
as  to  perfect  himself  in  the  operation  of  throwing.  His 
plot  was  before  long  discovered,  and  he  was  obliged  to 
fly  with  the  utmost  precipitancy,  bringing  with  him, 
however,  his  notes,  sketches,  and  portions  of  the  ma- 
chinery, and,  better  still,  a  mind  which  had  grasped  and 
comprehended  the  whole  process.  He  fled  to  avoid 
assassination,  and  took  refuge  on  board  ship,  and  return- 
ed to  England  with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  trade  he  had 
run  such  imminent  risk  to  acquire. 

Lombe  was  accompanied  in  his  flight  by  two  Italian 
workmen,  whom  he  had  bribed,  and  who  risked  their 
lives  in  his  scheme.  On  arriving  in  England,  he  at  once 
fixed  on  Derby  as  the  scene  of  his  operations,  and  in 
1717  arranged  with  the  Corporation  for  an  island  on  the 
River  Derwent,  at  the  yearly  rent  of  £8.  On  this  island 
Lombe  erected,  at  a  cost  of  £30,000,  the  mill,  yet  stand- 
ing, called  "the  Old  Silk  Mill."  The  ground  being 
swampy,  Lombe,  before  he  began  to  build  his  mill, 
caused  immense  piles  of  oak,  twenty  feet  in  length,  to 
be  driven  close  together  by  means  of  an  engine  which  he 
contrived  for  the  purpose,  and  on  these  piles  was  laid  a 
stone  foundation,  on  which  were  turned  the  stone  arches 
that  support  the  walls. 

During  the  four  years  occupied  in  the  erection  of  the 
mill,  Lombe,  in  order  to  save  time  and  to  raise  money  to 
carry  on  the  works,  hired  rooms  in  various  parts  of  Der- 
by, and  arranged  with  the  corporation  to  use  the  town- 
hall,  where  he  set  up  machines,  which  were  for  the  time 
worked  by  hand.  These  engines  more  than  fulfilled  his 
expectations,  and  he  was  enabled  to  sell  thrown  silk  at 
much  lower  prices  than  it  could  be  obtained  for  from  the 
Italians.  By  the  time  his  large  mill  was  completed  and 


SIR    THOMAS    LOMBE.  323 

his  machinery  in  active  operation,  he  had  permanently 
established  the  silk-throwing  trade.  In  1718  he  obtained 
a  patent  for  the  sole  and  exclusive  property  in  the  mill 
for  fourteen  years,  and,  with  the  aid  of  his  Italian  work- 
men, carried  on  his  new  manufacture  with  great  success. 
John  Lornbe  did  not,  however,  long  enjoy  this  pros- 
perity; for  soon  afterward  he  died,  at  the  early  age  of 
twenty-nine,  from  the  effects  of  poison  administered  to 
him  by  the  Italians  through  whom  he  had  learned  the 
art.  William  Hutton,  the  venerable  historian,  and  a 
native  of  Derby,  whose  early  days  were  spent  toiling 
wearily  in  this  very  mill,  says  quaintly,  among  other  in- 
teresting references : 

But,  alas !  he  had  not  pursued  this  lucrative  commerce  more  than 
three  or  four  years,  when  the  Italians,  who  felt  the  effect  of  the  theft 
from  their  want  of  trade,  determined  his  destruction,  and  hoped  that 
of  his  works  would  follow.  An  artful  woman  came  over  in  the  char- 
acter of  a  friend,  associated  with  the  parties,  and  assisted  in  the  busi- 
ness ;  she  attempted  to  gain  both  the  Italians,  and  succeeded  with  one. 
By  these  a  slow  poison  was  supposed,  and  perhaps  justly,  to  have  been 
administered  to  John  Lombe,  who  lingered  two  or  three  years  in 
agony.  The  Italian  fled  to  his  own  country,  and  the  woman  was  in- 
terrogated, but  nothing  transpired  except  what  strengthened  suspicion. 
Grand  funerals  were  the  fashion ;  and  perhaps  the  most  superb  in- 
humation known  in  Derby  was  that  of  John  Lombe.  He  was  a  man 
of  quiet  deportment,  who  had  brought  a  beneficial  manufactory  into 
the  place,  employed  the  poor,  and  at  advanced  wages,  and  thus  could 
not  fail  to  meet  with  respect ;  and  his  melancholy  end  excited  much 
sympathy. 

Lombe  was  buried  in  All  Saints'  Church,  Derby.  Dy- 
ing a  bachelor,  his  property  fell  into  the  hands  of  his 
brother,  William  Lombe,  who  shortly  afterward,  being 
of  a  melancholy  temperament,  shot  himself.  About  1726 
the  mills  passed  to  his  cousin,  Sir  Thomas  Lombe.  In 
1732  the  patent  expired,  when  Sir  Thomas  petitioned 
Parliament  for  a  renewal,  and  pleaded  "  that  the  works 
had  taken  so  long  a  time  in  perfecting,  and  the  people  in 
teaching,  that  there  had  been  none  to  acquire  emolu- 
ment from  the  patent."  "  But  he  forgot,"  says  Hutton, 
"to  inform  them  that  he  had  accumulated  more  than 
£120,000!"  The  government  declined  to  renew  the 
patent,  but  granted  the  sum  of  £14,000  to  Sir  Thomas 
as  compensation,  on  condition  that  he  would  prepare, 
and  deposit  in  the  Tower  of  London,  an  exact  and  faith- 


324  CULTURE    OP   SILK   IN   ENGLAND. 

ful  model  of  his  machinery,  for  the  inspection  and  advant- 
age of  others  who  might  purpose  constructing  and 
carrying  on  similar  works. 

The  act  authorizing  the  issue  of  the  money  mentions, 
among  other  causes  which  justified  the  grant,  the  great 
obstruction  offered  to  Sir  Thomas  Lombe's  undertaking 
by  the  King  of  Sardinia,  in  prohibiting  the  exportation 
of  raw  silk  which  the  engines  were  intended  to  work. 

The  account  of  the  machinery  of  this  immense  mill, 
five  stories  in  height,  and  one  eighth  of  a  mile  in  length, 
has  been  much  exaggerated.  The  grand  machine  is 
stated  to  have  been  constructed  with  26,586  wheels  and 
96,746  movements,  which  worked  73,726  yards  of  organ- 
zine  silk  thread  with  every  revolution  of  the  water-wheel 
whereby  the  machinery  was  driven ;  and  as  this  revolved 
three  times  in  each  minute,  the  almost  inconceivable 
quantity  of  318,504,960  yards  of  organzine  could  be  pro- 
duced daily !  Button's  authority  is,  however,  to  be  pre- 
ferred, for  he  served  an  apprenticeship  of  seven  years  in 
the  mill,  and  he  reduces  the  number  of  wheels  to  13,384. 

Soon  after  Lombe's  patent  had  expired  a  mill  was 
erected  at  Stockport,  and  this  was  followed  by  others  in 
Derby  and  in  various  places,  until  now  there  are  about 
400  silk-throwing  factories  in  England,  employing,  it  is 
computed,  considerably  more  than  100,000  operatives. 

The  chest  in  which  John  Lombe  brought  over  to  En- 
gland his  spindles,  and  various  matters  connected  with 
the  trade,  we  here  engrave.  It  is  one  of  the  most  richly 
carved  and  painted  chests  of  its  kind  which  is  extant. 
Since  Lombe's  time,  it  has,  until  within  the  last  few  years, 
been  preserved  in  the  mill  which  he  built,  but  is  now  the 
property  of  Mr.  Llewellynn  Jewitt,  F.S.A.,  of  Derby. 
The  chest  is,  of  course,  much  older  than  Lombe's  time, 
and,  apart  from  its  association  with  his  name  and  career, 
is  a  remarkably  fine  example  of  art.  The  mill  is  pic- 
turesquely situated  on  the  Derwent :  since  Lombe's  time 
it  has  received  many  additions ;  but  the  old  mill,  as  built 
by  him,  still  remains,  and  is  likely  to  last  through  many 
generations.  The  accompanying  view  has  been  sketched 
from  St.  Michael's  Mill. 

Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  rear  silk-worms  in  England. 
James  I.,  to  obtain  the  requisite  food  for  the  silk-worms,  in  1608  sent 


fs*^t 

LOMBE'S  SILK  MILL,  DERBY. 


TnK  CHEST  IN  wnioii  JOHN  LOMBE  BROUGHT  FROM  PIEDMONT  THE  FIRST 
SILK  MACHINERY  INTO  ENGLAND, 


CULTURE    OF    SILK   IN  ENGLAND.  327 

circular  letters  to  all  the  counties  of  England,  strongly  recommending 
the  inhabitants  to  plant  mulberry-trees;  and  he  directed  to  be  dis- 
tributed 10,000  mulberry-plants,  which  were  to  be  procured  in  Lon- 
don at  three  farthings  per  plant.  In  1609  James  expended  £935  in 
the  planting  of  mulberry-trees  upon  the  site  of  the  present  Bucking- 
ham Palace  and  Gardens,  St.  James's  Park.  It  was  at  this  time  that 
Shakspeare  planted  his  mulberry-tree.  King  James's  garden  did  not 
succeed;  but  Charles  I.,  by  letters-patent,  in  the  fourth  year  of  his 
reign,  granted  to  Walter  Lord  Aston  the  custody  and  keeping  of  the 
garden,  and  of  the  mulberries  and  silk-worms  there,  and  of  all  the 
houses  and  buildings  to  the  same  garden  belonging,  for  his  own  and 
his  son's  life.  In  the  next  two  reigns  "the  Mulberry  Garden"  be- 
came a  place  of  public  refreshment :  it  is  a  favorite  locality  in  the 
gay  comedies  of  Charles  the  Second's  time.  The  Silk-Garden  scheme 
was  revived  in  1718,  when  part  of  the  estate  of  Sir  Thomas  More 
(Chelsea  Park)  was  leased  to  a  company,  and  2000  mulberry-trees 
were  planted.  Thoresby,  in  his  Diary,  1723,  tells  us  that  he  saw  "a 
sample  of  the  satin  lately  made  at  Chelsea  of  English  silk-worms  for 
the  Princess  of  Wales,  which  was  very  rich  and  beautiful."  This 
scheme  also  failed  ;  but  the  Clock-house  in  Lower  Chelsea  was  long 
after  famous  for  the  sale  of  mulberries  from  the  trees  planted  for  silk- 
rearing. 

In  1790  the  Society  of  Arts  awarded  a  premium  for  silk  grown  in 
the  neighborhood  of  London.  No  similar  success  is  recorded  until 
1839,  when  Mr.  Felkin  produced  at  Nottingham  some  fine  cocoons 
from  eggs  from  Italy.  Mrs.  Whitby,  at  Newlands,  near  Lymington, 
Hants,  has  plantations  of  mulberry-trees,  and  has  for  many  years 
reared  silk  with  success  from  eggs  of  the  large  Italian  sort,  of  four 
changes,  from  which  she  obtains  as  great  a  proportion  and  as  good  a 
quality  of  silk  as  they  do  in  Italy  or  France.  Mrs.  Whitby  has  pre- 
sented to  the  queen  twenty  yards  of  rich  and  brilliant  damask  manu- 
factured from  silk  raised  at  Newlands.  The  obtaining  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  food  for  the  worms  at  the  right  time  had  hitherto  been  the 
great  difficulty  of  growing  silk  in  England.  This  has  been  surmount- 
ed by  Mrs.  Whitby,  whose  silk  is  worth  as  much  in  the  market  as  the 
best  foreign  silks ;  and,  making  allowance  for  unfavorable  seasons, 
labor,  machinery,  outlay  of  money,  etc.,  Mrs.  Whitby  states  that  land 
laid  out  for  the  silk-worm's  food  will  afford  a  large  profit.  Some  of 
the  silk  grown  by  her  has  been  pronounced  superior  to  the  best  Ital- 
ian raw  silk. 

In  1846  scarfs  were  manufactured  in  Spitalfields  from  the  produce 
of  between  700  and  800  worms  kept  in  an  attic  room  in  Truro.  In 
size  and  weight  the  worms  surpassed  those  in  Italy ;  the  cocoons  were 
larger ;  the  quality  of  silk,  when  reeled,  was  fully  equal  to  the  best 
imported,  and  the  quantity  exceeded  the  Italian  average,  and  this  in 
a  season  not  remarkably  propitious. 

The  home  culture  of  silk  is  an  important  object,  since  the  value  of 
silk  brought  to  England  is  above  £2,000,000  annually;  and  the  silk 
manufacture  engages  perhaps  fifty  millions  of  our  capital,  and  em- 
ploys one  million  of  our  population. 


WILLIAM  LEE  AND  THE  STOCKING- 
FBAME. 

KNIT  Silk  Stockings  made  in  England  were  first  worn 
by  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  refused  to  wear  any  cloth  hose 
afterward.  An  apprentice,  soon  after,  borrowed  a  pair 
of  knit  worsted  stockings,  made  at  Mantua,  and  then 
made  a  pair  like  them,  which  he  presented  to  the  Earl 
of  Pembroke ;  and  these  are  the  first  worsted  stockings 
known  to  be  knit  in  England.  This  humble  process  of 
knitting  seems  to  have  been  superseded  by  the  stocking- 
frame  almost  immediately  after  the  introduction  of  knit 
stockings ;  for  the  invention  of  the  stocking-frame  dates 
from  1589,  the  thirty-first  year  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 

A  singular  confusion  pervades  the  early  history  of  the 
stocking-frame;  there  is  a  strange  jumble  of  persons, 
places,  and  dates  in  the  accounts  given  of  the  inven- 
tion and  the  inventor,  which  it  is  difficult  to  reconcile, 
unless  we  implicitly  believe  the  evidence  of  a  painting 
which  long  hung  in  Stocking- Weavers'  Hall,  in  Redcross 
Street,  London.  This  picture  contained  the  portrait  of 
a  man  in  collegiate  costume,  in  the  act  of  pointing  to  an 
iron  stocking-frame,  and  addressing  a  woman  who  is 
knitting  with  needles  by  hand.  The  picture  bore  the 
following  inscription:  "In  the  year  1589,  the  ingenious 
William  Lee,  A.M.,  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
devised  this  profitable  art  for  stockings  "(but,  being  de- 
spised, went  to  France),  yet  of  iron  to  himself,  but  to  us 
and  to  others  of  gold :  in  memory  of  whom  this  is  here 
painted." 

From  .Deering's  Account  of  Nottingham,  it  appears 
that  William  Lee  (whose  name  is  sometimes  written 
Lea)  was  a  native  of  Woodborough,  a  village  about  sev- 
en miles  from  Nottingham.  He  was  heir  to  a  consider- 
able freehold  estate,  and  a  graduate  of  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  It  is  reported  that,  being  enamored 
of  a  young  country-girl,  who,  during  his  visits,  paid  more 
attention  to  her  work,  which  was  knitting,  than  to  her 


LEE'S   STOCKING-FRAME.  329 

lover  and  his  proposals,  he  endeavored  to  find  out  a  ma- 
chine which  might  facilitate  and  forward  the  operation 
of  knitting,  and  by  this  means  afford  more  leisure  to  the 
object  of  his  affection  to  converse  with  him.  Beckmann 
says,  "  Love  indeed  is  fertile  in  inventions,  and  gave  rise, 
it  is  said,  to  the  art  of  painting ;  but  a  machine  so  com- 
plex in  its  parts  and  so  wonderful  in  its  effects  would 
seem  to  require  longer  and  greater  reflection,  more  judg- 
ment, and  more  time  and  patience  than  could  be  expect- 
ed in  a  lover.  But,  even  if  the  case  should  appear  prob- 
lematical, there  can  be  no  doubt  in  regard  to  the  invent- 
or, whom  most  of  the  English  writers  positively  assert 
to  have  been  William  Lee."  Deering  expressly  states 
that  Lee  made  the  first  loom  in  the  year  1589,  the  date 
named  on  the  painting. 

Another  version  of  the  story  states  that  Lee  was  ex- 
pelled from  the  University  for  marrying  contrary  to  the 
statutes.  Having  no  fortune,  the  wife  was  obliged  to 
contribute  to  their  joint  support  by  knitting ;  and  Lee, 
while  watching  the  motion  of  his  wife's  fingers,  conceived 
the  idea  of  imitating  those  movements  by  a  machine. 
According  to  another  version,  Lee,  while  yet  unmarried, 
excited  the  contempt  of  his  mistress  by  contriving  a  ma- 
chine to  imitate  the  primitive  process  of  knitting,  and 
was  rejected  by  her.  But  both  accounts  agree  that  the 
Stocking-frame  was  invented  by  Lee,  and  that  about  the 
date  assigned.  A  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  1816, 
however,  observes,  "  This  painting  might  give  rise  to  the 
story  of  Lee's  having  invented  the  machine  to  facilitate 
the  labor  of  knitting,  in  consequence  of  falling  in  love 
with  a  young  country-girl,  who,  during  his  visits,  was 
more  attentive  to  her 'knitting  than  his  proposals ;  or  the 
story  may,  perhaps,  have  suggested  the  picture." 

But  there  is  another  claimant.  Aaron  Hill  ascribes 
the  invention  to  a  young  Oxonian,  who,  having  con- 
tracted an  imprudent  marriage,  and  having  nothing  to 
support  his  family  but  the  produce  of  his  wife's  knitting, 
invented  the  stocking-frame,  and  thereby  accumulated  a 
large  fortune.  Evelyn,  in  his  Diary,  records  having  seen 
this  machine  as  follows:  "3  May,  1661.  I  went  to  see 
the  wonderful  engine  for  wreaving  silk  stockings,  said  to 
have  been  the  invention  of  an  Oxford  scholar  forty  years 


330  LEE'S  STOCKING-FRAME. 

since ;"  thus  placing  the  invention  many  years  later  than 
the  date  of  the  picture  in  Stocking-Weavers'  Hall. 

The  story  of  Lee's  after-life,  however,  corroborates  his 
being  the  inventor;  his  name  is  mentioned  as  such  in 
the  petition  of  the  Stocking-Weavers  of  London  to  allow 
them  to  establish  a  guild.  It  is  related  that  Lee,  having 
taught  the  use  of  the  machine  to  his  brother  and  the  rest 
of  his^  relations,  established  himself  at  Culverton,  near 
Nottingham,  as  a  stocking-weaver.  After  remaining 
there  five  years,  he  applied  to  Queen  .Elizabeth  for  coun- 
tenance and  support ;  but,  finding  himself  neglected  both 
by  the  queen  and  her  successor,  Jarnes  I.,  he  transferred 
himself  and  his  machines  to  France,  where  Henri  IV. 
and  his  sagacious  minister  Sully  gave  the  inventor  a 
welcome  reception.  Lee  is  said  to  have  carried  over 
nine  journeymen  and  several  looms  to  Rouen,  in  Nor- 
mandy. Nevertheless,  after  the  assassination  of  Henri, 
Lee  shared  in  the  persecutions  suffered  by  the  Protest- 
ants, and  is  said  to  have  died  in  great  distress,  of  grief 
and  disappointment,  in  Paris.  Some  of  his  workmen 
made  their  escape  to  England,  and,  under  one  Aston, 
who  had  been  Lee's  apprentice,  established  the  stocking- 
manufacture  permanently  in  England.  Of  Aston  we  find 
the  following  account  in  Thornton's  Nottinghamshire, 
1677,  fol.,  p.  297  : 

At  Culverton  was  bom  William  Lee,  Master  of  Arts  in  Cambridge, 
and  heir  to  a  pretty  freehold  here ;  who,  seeing  a  woman  knit,  in- 
vented a  loom  to  knit,  and  which  he  or  his  brother  James  performed 
and  exercised  before  Queen  Elizabeth ;  and  leaving  it  to  .  .  .  .  Aston, 
his  apprentice,  went  beyond  the  seas,  and  was  thereby  esteemed  the 
author  of  that  ingenious  engine  wherewith  they  now  weave  silk  and 
other  stockings.  This  ....  Aston  added  something  to  his  master's 
invention ;  he  was  some  time  a  miller  at  Thoroton,  nigh  which  place 
he  was  born. 

Lee's  invention  was  important,  as  it  not  only  enabled 
our  ancestors  to  discard  their  former  inelegant  hose,  but 
it  likewise  caused  the  English  manufactures  to  excel  all 
of  foreign  production,  and  to  be  sought  for  accordingly. 
Our  makers  soon  exported  vast  quantities  of  silk  stock- 
ings to  Italy :  these  maintained  their  superiority  for  so 
long  a  period,  that  Keyslar,  in  his  Travels  through  Europe 
as  late  as  the  year  1730,  remarks,  "At  Naples,  when  a 
tradesman  would  highly  recommend  his  silk  stockings, 


PICTURE   IN   STOCKING- WE  AVERS'   HALL.  331 

he  protests  they  are  right  English."  In  1663  Charles  II. 
granted  to  the  Framework-Knitters'  Society  of  London  a 
charter,  which  Oliver  Cromwell  had  refused  them. 

The  painting  of  Lee  and  his  wife,  however,  was  parted 
with  by  the  Company  at  a  period  of  pecuniary  embar- 
rassment. Mr.  Bennet  Woodcroft  has  collected  some 
particulars  of  the  disposal  of  the  picture,  in  the  hope  that 
they  may  lead  to  its  restoration.  In  a  list,  dated  1687, 
of  plate,  paintings,  etc.,  belonging  to  the  Company,  is  an 
item — "  Mr.  Lee's  picture,  by  Balderston :"  it  is  also  de- 
scribed in  Hatton's  London,  1 708.  From  1732,  the  Com- 
pany's books  show  no  more  meetings  at  their  Hall,  or 
any  farther  entry  of  the  picture.  The  Company  subse- 
quently let  their  Hall,  and  met  at  various  taverns.  The 
head  of  the  Court  Summons,  dated  1777,  is  engraved 
from  Lee's  picture ;  and  from  this  plate  is  copied  an  en- 
graving in  the  Gallery  of  Portraits  of  Inventors  in  the 
Great  Seal  Patent  Office.  The  picture  is  thought  to 
have  passed,  about  1773,  into  the  hands  of  an  influential 
member  of  the  Court  of  Framework  Knitters,  who  from 
time  to  time  lent  the  Company  money,  as  their  books 
testify.  The  Hall  in  Redcross  Street  has  long  been  taken 
down. 


JACQUARD  AND  HIS  LOOM. 

THE  several  looms  employed  in  weaving  appear  to 
have  been  alike  eclipsed  by  the  exquisite  apparatus  of 
M.  Jacquard,  which  is  very  properly  named  aftet  the  in- 
ventor. Like  too  many  other  inventors,  he  was  treated 
with  coldness  and  ingratitude  by  the  community  which 
he  has  so  largely  benefited. 

Joseph-Marie  Jacquard  was  born  at  Lyons  in  1752,  of 
humble  parents,  both  of  whom  were  weavers.  He  is 
said  to  have  been  left  even  to  teach  himself  to  read  and 
write ;  but  at  a  very  early  period  he  displayed  a  taste 
for  mechanics  by  constructing  neat  models  of  buildings, 
furniture,  etc.  At  the  age  of  twelve  his  father  placed 
him  with  a  book-binder ;  he  was  subsequently  engaged 
in  type-founding  and  the  manufacture  of  cutlery,  in  both 
which  occupations  he  gave  evidence  of  skill.  IJpon  the 
death  of  his  father,  young  Jacquard,  with  the  small  prop- 
erty left  him,  attempted  to  establish  a  business  in  weav- 
ing figured  fabrics,  but  failed,  and  he  was  compelled  to 
sell  his  looms  to  pay  his  debts.  .He  subsequently  mar- 
ried, and,  disappointed  of  a  portion  with  his  wife,  he  was 
forced  to  sell  his  paternal  residence.  After  occupying 

movements  in  weav- 
>roduced  nothing 
was  driven  into 
the  service  of  a  lime-burner  at  Bresse,  while  his  wife  had 
a  small  straw-hat  business  at  Lyons,  whither,  in  1793, 
Jacquard  returned,  and  assisted  in  the  defense  of  that 
place  against  the  army  of  the  Convention,  his  only  son, 
then  a  youth  of  fifteen,  fighting  by  his  side.  They  were 
compelled  to  fly,  and,  joining  the  army  of  the  Rhine,  his 
son  was  killed  in  battle,  and  Jacquard  returned  to  Lyons, 
where  he  assisted  his  wife  in  her  business  of  straw-hat 
making.  Lyons  at  length  began  to  rise  from  its  ruins, 
and  its  artisans  returned  from  Switzerland,  Germany,  and 
England,  where  they  had  taken  refuge.  Jacquard  now 


JACQTJAKD'S  LOOM.  333 

applied  himself  with  renewed  energy  to  the  completion 
of  a  machine  for  figure-weaving,  of  which  he  had  con- 
ceived the  idea  as  early  as  1790.  He  succeeded,  though 
imperfectly;  and  in  1801  he  received  from  the  National 
Exposition  a  bronze  medal  for  his  invention,  which  he 
patented.  He  set  up  a  loom  on  this  new  principle,  which 
was  visited  by  Carnot,  the  celebrated  mathematician. 

About  this  time  Jacquard's  attention  was  directed  by 
an  English  newspaper  to  a  reward  offered  by  a  society 
for  the  invention  of  a  machine  for  weaving  nets  for  fish- 
,ing  and  maritime  purposes.  Jacquard  made  the  appa- 
ratus, but  threw  it  aside ;  and  his  machine-made  net  fall- 
ing into  the  hands  of  the  prefect  at  Lyons,  he  and  his 
machine  were  placed  under  arrest  and  conveyed  to  Paris, 
where  the  invention  was  submitted  to  inspectors,  upon 
whose  report  a  gold  medal  was  awarded  to  Jacquard  in 
February,  1804.  He  was  now  introduced  to  Napoleon 
and  Carnot,  when  the  latter,  not  understanding  his  mech- 
anism, roughly  asked  him  if  he  were  the  man  who  pre- 
tended to  do  that  impossibility — to  tie  a  knot  in  a 
stretched  string.  Jacquard,  not  disconcerted,  explained 
the  action  of  his  machinery  with  simplicity,  and  con- 
vinced Carnot  that  the  supposed  impossibility  was  accom- 
plished by  it.  He  was  then  employed  to  repair  and  put 
in  order  the  models  and  machines  in  the  Conservatoire 
des  Arts  et  Metiers,  and  while  there  he  made  some  in- 
genious advances  in  weaving  machinery,  one  of  which 
was  for  producing  ribbons  with  a  velvet  face  on  each 
side.  He  also  contrived  some  improvements  upon  a 
loom  invented  by  Yaucanson,  which  improvements  have 
been  stated  to  be  the  origin  of  the  Jacquard  machine. 
According  to  another  account,  Yaucanson's  loom  is  in  no 
way  connected  with  Jacquard's ;  and,  as  its  mechanism 
is  very  complex,  its  application  limited  to  very  small  pat- 
terns, its  action  slow,  and  its  cost  very  great,  it  belongs 
rather  to  the  class  of  curious  than  of  useful  machines. 

In  1804  Jacquard  returned  to  Lyons  to  superintend 
his  inventions  for  figure-weaving  and  for  making  nets, 
and  in  1806  the  municipal  administration  of  Lyons  pur- 
chased the  loom  for  the  use  of  the  public.  For  some 
years,  however,  Jacquard  had  to  struggle  against  the 
prejudice  of  the  Lyonnese  weavers,  who  conspired  to  dis- 


334  JACQUAKD'S  LOOM. 

courage  his  machinery ;  and  eventually  it  was  publicly 
broken  up  and  sold  as  old  materials,  while  the  inventor's 
personal  safety  was  at  times  endangered.  At  length,  un- 
der the  effect  of  foreign  competition,  the  value  of  Jac- 
quard's  loom  was  acknowledged,  and  it  was  brought  very 
extensively  into  use,  not  only  in  France,  but  in  Switzer- 
land, Germany,  Italy,  and  America,  and  it  has  even  been 
introduced  into  the  empire  of  China. 

Jacquard  was  solicited  by  the  manufacturers  of  Rouen 
and  St.  Quentin  to  organize  their  factories  of  cotton  and 
batiste,  and  he  received  a  similar  offer  from  England ; 
but  he  preferred  remaining  at  Lyons,  and  continued  to 
promote  the  use  of  his  great  invention  until  he  retired  to 
the  neighboring  village  of  Oudlins,  where  he  died  in  1834, 
at  the  age  of  eighty-two.  During  his  life  he  received 
the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  and  in  1840  a  public 
statue  was  raised  to  his  memory  at  Lyons. 

The  introduction  of  Jacquard's  cheap  and  simple  ma- 
chine, coming  within  the  reach  of  the  humble  weaver, 
forms  a  memorable  epoch  in  the  textile  art.  By  its 
agency  the  richest  and  most  complex  designs  are  pro- 
duced with  facility  at  the  most  moderate  price ;  and  so 
far  from  diminishing  employment,  as  some  feared  on  its 
first  introduction,  it  is  stated  to  have  increased  the  num- 
ber of  workmen  in  the  manufacture  in  which  it  is  used 
tenfold.  Many  ingenious  applications  of  the  Jacquard 
loom  have  been  made,  either  to  produce  novel  combina- 
tions or  to  work  with  more  than  usual  rapidity. 

Jacquard's  invention  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  loom, 
but  an  appendage  to  the  loom,  intended  to  elevate  or  de- 
press, by  bars,  the  warp-threads  for  the  reception  of  the 
shuttle ;  the  patterns  being  produced  by  means  of  bands 
of  punched  cards  acting  on  needles,  with  loops  or  eyes, 
which  regulate  the  figure.  The  apparatus  was  first  ap- 
plied to  silk-weaving  only,  but  it  has  been  extended  to 
bobbin-net  and  other  fancy  manufactures,  carpet-weav- 
ing, etc.  Formerly  the  most  elaborate  brocades  could 
only  be  produced  by  the  most  skillful  "weavers  and  the 
most  painful  labor ;  now,  by  aid  of  the  Jacquard  loom, 
the  most  beautiful  products  may  be  accomplished  by  men 
possessing  only  the  ordinary  amount  of  skill,  while  the 
labor  attendant  upon  the  actual  weaving  is  little  more 


INGBATITUDE   TO   JACQUAKD.  335 

than  that  required  for  making  the  plainest  goods.  The 
name  of  Jacquard  has  become,  so  to  speak,  technical  in 
both  the  Old  and  New  World,  and  his  loom  will  prove  a 
lasting  record  of  his  mechanical  talent,  though  it  has  not 
uniformly  secured  him  the  respect  of  his  own  countrymen. 
In  1853  a  strange  instance  of  ingratitude  was  added 
to  the  history  of  Jacquard  and  his  Loom.  Two  of  the 
inventor's  nieces  were  compelled  by  poverty  to  oifer  for 
sale  the  gold  medal  bestowed  by  Louis  XVIII.  on  their 
uncle,  the  sum  asked  being  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  gold, 
£20.  The  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  Lyons  being  ac- 
quainted with  the  circumstance,  agreed  to  purchase  the 
medal  for  £24  !  Such  was  the  gratitude  of  the  manufac- 
turing interest  of  Lyons  to  the  memory  of  a  man  to 
whom  it  owes  so  large  a  portion  of  its  splendor. 


DE.  FKANKLIN  PKOYES  THE  IDENTITY  OF 
LIGHTNING  AND  ELECTKICITY. 

THE  Abbe  Nollet  and  other  investigators  had  already 
made  some  ingenious  suggestions  respecting  the  analo- 
gies between  Electricity  and  Lightning,  when,  in  1752, 
their  truth  was  amply  proved  by  Franklin,  wiio,  like  his 
predecessors,  meditating  upon  the  similarity  of  their  ef- 
fects, traced  out  farther  resemblances,  and  at  length  hit 
upon  the  happy  expedient  of  sending  up  a  common  kite 
to  an  -electric  cloud,  and  thus  experimentally  demonstra- 
ting their  identity.  The  following  are  the  particulars  of 
this  great  discovery : 

Franklin  begins  his  account  of  the  similarity  of  the  Electric  Fluid 
and  Lightning  by  cautioning  his  readers  not  to  be  staggered  at  the 
great  difference  of  effects  in  point  of  degree,  since  from  that  no  fair 
argument  could  be  drawn  of  the  actual  disparity  of  their  natures.  It 
is,  he  says,  no  wonder  that  the  effects  of  the  one  should  so  far  exceed 
those  of  the  other  ;  for  if  two  gun-barrels  electrified  will  strike  at  two 
inches  distance,  and  make  a  report,  at  how  great  a  distance  10,000 
acres  of  electric  cloud  must  strike  and  give  its  fire,  and  how  loud  must 
be  the  crack!  He  then  adds  that  flashes  of  lightning  are  generally 
crooked  and  waving,  and  so  is  a  long  electric  spark ;  that  lightning, 
like  common  electricity,  strikes  the  highest  and  most  pointed  objects 
in  its  way  in  preference  to  others,  such  as  hills,  trees,  towers,  spires, 
masts  of  ships,  points  of  spears,  etc.  ;  that  it  takes  the  readiest  and 
best  conductor ;  that  it  sets  fire  to  inflammable  bodies,  rends  others  to 
pieces,  and  melts  the  metals.  Lightning,  he  adds,  has  often  been 
known  to  strike  people  blind,  and  the  same  happened  to  a  pigeon 
which  had  received  a  violent  shock  of  electricity ;  in  other  cases  it 
killed  animals,  and  they  have  also  been  killed  by  electricity. 

Reasoning  on  these  effects,  and  having  observed  that  pointed  con- 
ductors appear  to  attract  electricity,  he  conceived  that  pointed  rods  of 
iron,  fixed  in  the  air,  might  draw  from  clouds  their  electric  matter 
without  noise  or  danger,  and  dissipate  it  at  their  termination  in  the 
earth.  The  following  is  his  memorandum  on  this  subject:  "The 
electric  fluid  is  attracted  by  points;  we  do  not  know  whether  this 
property  be  in  lightning;  but  since  they  agree  in  all  particulars  in 
which  we  can  already  compare  them,  it  is  not  improbable  that  they 
agree  likewise  in  this.  Let  the  experiment  be  made." 

In  the  year  1752,  while  waiting  for  the  erection  of  a  spire  in  the 


IDENTITY    OF    LIGHTNING    AND    ELECTRICITY.         33V 

city  of  Philadelphia,*  not  imagining  that  a  pointed  rod  of  any  moder- 
ate height  would  answer  the  purpose,  it  occurred  to  Franklin  that  by 
means  of  a  common  kite  he  might  have  ready  access  to  the  higher  re- 
gions of  the  atmosphere.  Preparing,  therefore,  a  large  silk  handker- 
chief, and  two  cross-sticks  to  extend  it  on,  he  took  the  opportunity  of 
the  first  approaching  thunderstorm,  and  went  into  a  field,  where  there 
was  a  shed  proper  for  the  purpose  ;  but,  dreading  the  ridicule  which 
he  feared  might  attend  an  unsuccessful  attempt,  he  communicated  his 
intention  to  no  one  but  his  son,  who  assisted  him  in  flying  his  kite. 
A  considerable  time  elapsed  without  any  appearance  of  success,  and  a 
promising  cloud  passed  over  the  kite  with  no  effect  ;  when,  just  as  he 
was  beginning  to  despair,  he  observed  some  loose  threads  upon  the 
string  of  the  kite  begin  to  diverge  and  stand  erect  :  on  this,  he  fastened 
a  key  to  the  string,  and  on  presenting  his  knuckle  to  it  was  gratified 
by  the  first  electric  spark  which  had  thus  been  drawn  from  the  clouds  : 
others  succeeded  ;  and  when  the  string  had  become  wet  by  the  falling 
rain,  a  copious  stream  of  electric  fire  passed  from  the  conductor  to 
his  hand.  What  were  Franklin's  emotions  upon  this  interesting  occa- 
sion it  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  :  we  are  told  that,  when  he  saw  the 
fibres  of  the  string  diverge  and  the  spark  pass,  "he  uttered  a  deep 
sigh,  and  wished  that  the  moment  were  his  last;"  he  felt  that  his 
name  would  be  immortalized  by  the  discovery. 

Dr.  Franklin  pursued  these  experiments  with  much 
assiduity  and  success.  He  erected  an  insulated  rod  to 
draw  the  lightning  from  the  clouds  into  his  house,  and 
performed,  with  the  electricity  thus  derived,  nearly  all 

*  Proud  as  are  the  people  of  Philadelphia  of  their  illustrious  towns- 
man, they  pay  little  respect  to  his  remains.  These  lie  within  a  very 
short  distance  of  Arch  Street,  in  the  northeast  corner  of  Christ  Church 
grave-yard,  at  Fifth  and  Arch  Streets.  The  spot  is  marked  by  a  large 
marble  slab,  laid  flat  on  the  ground,  with  nothing  carved  upon  it  but 
these  words  : 


DEBORAH 

Franklin,  it  will  be  recollected,  wrote  a  humorous  epitaph  for  himself: 
but  his  good  taste  and  good  sense  showed  him  how  unsuitable  to  his 
living  character  it  would  have  been  to  jest  in  such  a  place.  After  all, 
his  literary  works,  scientific  fame,  and  his  undoubted  patriotism,  form 
his  best  epitaph.  Still,  it  may  be  thought,  he  might  have  been  distin- 
guished in  his  own  land  by  a  more  honorable  resting-place  than  the 
obscure  corner  of  an  obscure  burying-ground,  where  his  bones  lie  in- 
discriminately along  with  those  of  ordinary  mortals  ;  and  his  tomb, 
already  well-nigh  hid  in  the  rubbish,  may  soon  be  altogether  lost. 
We  doubt  much  if  one  in  a  hundred  of  the  present  generation  of 
Philadelphia  have  ever  seen  Franklin's  grave.  Thousands  pass  daily 
within  a  few  feet  of  the  spot  where  his  ashes  and  those  of  his  wife  re- 
pose, without  being  conscious  of  the  fact,  or,  if  aware  of  it,  they  are 
unable  to  obtain  a  glimpse  of  the  grave. 

r 


338 

the  experiments  for  which  he  had  before  employed  the 
common  machine ;  and,  that  no  opportunity  might  be 
lost  of  making  such  experiments,  he  attached  a  chime  of 
bells  to  the  electric  rod,  which  gave  him  notice  by  their 
ringing  of  the  electric  state  of  his  apparatus. 

It  should,  however,  be  stated  that  two  French  gentle- 
men, Messrs.  Dalibard  and  Deloz,  were  probably  the  first 
who  experimentally  verified  Franklin's  hypothesis,  al- 
though the  doctor  was  unacquainted  with  their  proceed- 
ings. The  former  prepared  his  apparatus  at  Marly,  near 
Paris ;  the  latter  at  his  house,  which  stood  upon  high 
ground  in  that  city.  M.  Dalibard's  apparatus  consisted 
of  an  iron  rod  forty  feet  long,  the  lower  end  of  which 
was  brought  into  a  sentry-box,  where  the  rain  could  not 
enter,  while  on  the  outside  it  was  fastened  to  three 
wooden  posts  by  silken  strings  defended  from  the  rain. 
This  machine  was  the  first  that  happened  to  be  visited 
by  the  ethereal  fire.  M.  Dalibard  himself  was  from 
home;  but  in  his  absence  he  had  intrusted  the  care  of 
his  apparatus  to  one  Coisier,  who  was  directed  to  call 
some  of  his  neighbors,  particularly  the  curate  of  the 
parish,  whenever  there  should  be  any  appearance  of  a 
thunder-storm.  At  length,  on  May  10,  1752,  between 
two  and  three  in  the  afternoon,  Coisier  heard  a  loud  clap 
of  thunder ;  he  immediately  ran  to  the  sentry-box,  and, 
in  the  presence  of 'the  curate  and  several  neighbors,  drew 
sparks  from  the  conductor.  A  few  days  afterward  a 
successful  repetition  of  the  experiment  was  made  by  M. 
Deloz  at  Paris. 

These  important  and  interesting  experiments  were  re- 
peated in  almost  every  civilized  country  with  varied  suc- 
cess. In  France  a  grand  result  was  obtained  by  M.  de 
Romas.  He  constructed  a  kite  seven  feet  high  and  three 
feet  wTide,  which  was  raised  to  the  height  of  550  feet  by 
a  string  with  a  fine  wire  interwoven  through  its  whole 
length,  to  render  it  a  better  conductor.  On  the  26th 
of  August,  1756,  sparks,  or  rather  streams  of  light,  were 
darted  from  the  string  of  this  kite  of  an  inch  in  diameter 
and  ten  feet  long. 

Considering  the  facility,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the 
danger  of  these  experiments,  it  is  curious  that  they 
have  only  in  one  instance  been  attended  by  a  fatal  result, 


RICHMAN'S  FATAL  EXPERIMENT.  339 

namely,  in  the  case  of  Professor  Richman  of  St.  Peters- 
burg. He  had  constructed  an  apparatus  for  experiments 
on  atmospherical  electricity  which  was  entirely  insula- 
ted, and  had  no  contrivance  for  discharging  it  when  too 
strongly  electrified.  On  the  6th  of  August,  1753,  he  was 
exhibiting  the  electricity  of  his  apparatus  in  company 
with  a  friend;  while  attending  to  an  experiment,  his 
head  accidentally  approached  the  insulated  rod,  and  a 
flash  of  lightning  immediately  passed  from  it  through 
his  body,  and  deprived  him  of  life.  A  red  spot  was  pro- 
duced upon  his  forehead,  his  shoe  was  burst  open,  and  a 
part  of  his  waistcoat  singed ;  his  companion  was  for 
some  time  rendered  senseless ;  the  door  of  the  room  was 
split  and  torn  off  its  hinges. 

Franklin's  discovery  of  the  identity  of  lightning  and 
electricity  has  not  been  without  its  important  practical 
results,  among  which  is  the  application  of  conductors  to 
buildings  and  ships,  by  which  their  safety  during  a  thun- 
der-storm is  almost  insured.  The  discovery  has  been 
most  extensively  applied  by  Sir  William  Snow  Harris  in 
his  lightning-rods,  which,  by  insuring  the  security  of 
ships  and  buildings,  have  saved  many  lives  and  much 
valuable  property. 


CHEMISTRY  OF  THE  GASES:  DISCOVERY 
OF  CHOKE-DAMP  AND  FIRE-DAMP. 

IN  the  time  of  Van  Helmont,  early  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  workmen  in  certain  German  mines  were  mo- 
lested, just  as  our  colliers  still  are,  by  poisonous  /choke- 
damp  and  explosive  fire-damp ;  that  is  to  say  (for  the 
words  were  German,  though  only  too  easily  domesticated 
in  England),  by  suffocating  and  by  fiery  vapors,  the  for- 
mer of  which  put  out  life  silently  but  summarily,  while 
the  latter  might  blow  its  unfortunate  victims  to  pieces. 
In  sarcastic  playfulness  with  the  popular  superstition  as 
to  these  guardians  of  the  mineral  treasures  of  the  old 
earth,  Van  Helmont  imposed  upon  them  the  name  of 
Ghosts  or  Gases  /  but  he  knew  little  or  nothing  positive- 
ly about  them.  Boyle  was  probably  the  first  to  suspect 
that  some  solid  bodies  do  in  certain  circumstances — when 
they  are  heated,  for  instance — throw  off  artificial  airs, 
resembling  the  common  atmospheric  gases  in  thinness 
and  in  elasticity,  as  well  as  in  dryness  and  permanency, 
but  differing  from  them  he  could  not  tell  how. 

It  was  young  Black,  the  greatest  chemist  Scotland  has 
produced,  and  the  discoverer  of  that  fact  of  latent  heat 
which  Watt  has  embodied  in  the  steam-engine,  who  took 
the  first  positively  chemical  step  in  the  progress.  He 
discovered  that  limestone  (or  chalk,  or  marble,  or  oyster- 
shell),  when  burned  in  the  kiln,  and  thereby  rendered 
quick,  parts  with  a  kind  of  air  in  which  no  animal  can 
breathe  or  live;  and  also  that  it  is  owing  to  its  setting 
free  this  air  or  gas  that  the  change  from  inactive  lime- 
stone to  caustic  quicklime  is  due.  He  called  it  fixed  air, 
imprisoned  in  the  rock  till  the  furnace,  or  oil  of  vitriol, 
or  the  spirit  of  salt,  extricated  it  from  its  fixture.  He 
perceived  and  proved  that  this  fixed  air  was  neither 
more  nor  less  than  of  the  nature  of  an  acid,  but  existing, 
alone  of  all  acids,  in  the  airy  or  gaseous  state;  and  it 
was  then  conceived  that  there  may  exist  many  different 


CHOKE-DAMP    AND    FIRE-DAMP.  341 

kinds  of  airy  matter,  just  as  there  are  many  kinds  of 
solid  and  liquid  substances. 

This  magnificent  discovery  was  made  at  Edinburg  al- 
most within  the  memory  of  its  present  inhabitants,  and 
it  is  the  greatest  discovery  in  natural  science  that  has 
ever  been  made  there.  Dr.  Chalmers  said  of  this  chem- 
istry of  the  gases,  "  Think  of  Black  catching  fixed  air, 
and  discerning  it  to  be  an  acid,  at  a  time  when  nobody 
thought  of  such  things ;  that  was  the  great  stroke ;  it 
was  a  very  great  thing  to  do." 

Soon  after  this  initiative  had  been-  taken  by  Joseph 
Black,  Priestley  invented  an  easy  way  of  collecting  and 
handling  gaseous  bodies  (the  pneumatic  trough,  with  its 
jars),  and  actually  came  upon  some  nine  kinds  of  gas  (all 
differing  from  ordinary  air,  and  one  from  another)  in  a 
few  years.  Scheele  had,  meanwhile,  been  making  con- 
quests of  the  same  sort  in  an  obscure  Swedish  town,  with 
no  apparatus  but  phials  and  bladders,  and  had  added  two 
or  three  more  to  the  list  of  new  gases.  All  Europe  fol- 
lowed these  sagacious  leaders — Cavendish,  the  discover- 
er of  hydrogen  ;  Watt,  who  first  suggested  that  water  is 
composed  of  two  gases ;  Rutherford,  the  discoverer  of 
nitrogen ;  Lavoisier,  the  interpreter,  though  not  the  first 
discoverer  of  oxygen,  and  the  rest — until  every  body  has 
at  length  become  aware  that  gases  are  just  the  steams  of 
liquids  which  boil  at  immensely  low  points  of  temper- 
ature, these  liquids  being  the  liquefactions  of  solid  bodies 
which  melt  at  temperatures  lower  still ;  and  that,  there- 
fore, there  may  be  no  end  to  the  number  of  the  kinds  of 
gaseous  matter,  precisely  as  there  is  no  known  limit  to 
the  vast  variety  of  liquids  and  solids. — North  British 
Review,  No.  35. 

Of  Joseph  Black  it  has  been  said  he  lived  as  fine  a  life 
of  science  as  was  ever  lived,  and  died  with  a  cup  of  milk 
un spilled  in  his  hand. 

The  gas  called  by  miners  Fire-damp,  or  simply  damp,  is  only  met 
with  in  mining  certain  kinds  of  coal.  It  is  especially  abundant  in 
the  Newcastle  coal-field.  Elsewhere  what  is  called  Choke-damp  pre- 
vails, this  being  carbonic  acid  gas ;  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  other 
gases  are  mixed  from  time  to  time  with  these.  When  it  is  remem- 
bered that  a  large  number  of  men,  and  often  many  horses,  are  em- 
ployed underground,  and  that  frequently  there  are  miles  of  under- 
ground passages,  and  hundreds  of  miners,  without  more  than  two  or 


342  CHOKE-DAMP   AND   FIRE-DAMP. 

three  shafts  communicating  with  the  upper  air,  and  these  only  chim- 
neys many  hundred  feet  long,  and  of  small  area,  no  one  will  be  sur- 
prised that  the  air  becomes  vitiated,  and  that  a  small  addition  of  foul 
gas  renders  it  unfit  for  the  support  of  life.  When,  however,  gas  of 
whatever  kind  comes  off  regularly,  the  mechanical  means  of  ventila- 
tion commonly  adopted  are  sufficient.  It  is  only  when  there  are  sud- 
den, unexpected,  large  jets  of  gas  instantaneously  poured  forth,  and 
when  this  gas,  mixed  with  common  air,  becomes  highly  explosive, 
that  the  real  danger  arises. 


SIR  HUMPHEEY  DAVY  AND  THE  SAFETY- 
LAMP. 

THE  origin  of  this  great  "  invention  for  the  preservation 
of  human  life"  greatly  partakes  of  that  interest  which  is 
always  concentrated  on  the  struggle  of  life.  Its  princi- 
ple was  doubtless  experimented  on  by  Davy  when  a 
young  man  at  Penzance,  and  writing  his  Essays  on  Heat 
and  Light,  even  before  he  had  commenced  the  study  of 
chemistry.  It  is  true  that  he  shone  early  in  the  eye  of 
the  world,  and  was  by  nature  much  more  than  equal  to 
the  kind  of  researches  he  undertook;  yet  his  great 
achievement  of  the  Safety-lamp  was  the  result  of  many 
years'  patient  and  enlightened  research,  and  may  be 
traced  from  the  commencement  of  his  career  of  original 
research  in  the  most  remote  town  of  Cornwall,  to  his 
construction  of  the  Lamp  itself  in  the  theatre  of  the  Roy- 
al Institution  in  London ;  where,  in  like  manner,  he  de- 
veloped heat  by  rubbing  two  pieces  of  ice  together,  which 
he  had  many  years  before  rehearsed  with  Tom  Harvey, 
one  winter's  day,  beside  Larigan  River. 

The  boyhood  of  Davy  has  been  sketched  in  some  of 
the  most  fascinating  pieces  of  biography  ever  written  ;* 
the  annals  of  science  do  not  present  us  with  any  record 
that  equals  the  school-days  and  self-education  of  the  boy 
Humphrey  in  popular  interest ;  and,  unlike  many  bright 
mornings,  this  commencement  in  a  few  years  led  to  a 
brilliant  meridian,  and  by  a  succession  of  discoveries,  ac- 
complished more,  in  relation  to  change  of  theory  and  ex- 
tension of  science,  than  in  the  most  ardent  and  ambitious 
moments  of  youth  he  could  either  hope  to  effect  or  im- 
agine possible. 

Humphrey  Davy  was  born  at  Penzance  in  1778  ;  was 
a  healthy,  strong,  and  active  child,  and  could  speak  flu- 
ently before  he  was  two  years  old ;  copied  engravings 

*  Among  these  interesting  records,  entitled  to  foremost  mention  is 
the  eloquent  article  in  No.  3  of  the  North  British  Review,  on  Dr. 
Davy's  edition  of  the  works  of  his  illustrious  brother. 


t>44  DAVY    AT   THE   ROYAL   INSTITUTION. 

before  he  learned  to  write,  and  could  recite  part  of  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress  before  he  "could  well  read  it.  At  the 
age  of  five  years  he  could  gain  a  good  account  of  the 
contents  of  a  book  while  turning  over  the  leaves ;  and 
he  retained  this  remarkable  faculty  through  life.  He 
excelled  in  telling  stories  to  his  playmates ;  loved  fishing, 
and  collecting  and  painting  birds  and  fishes ;  he  had  his 
own  little  garden,  and  recorded  his  impressions  of  ro- 
mantic scenery  in  verse  of  no  ordinary  merit.  To  his 
self-education,  however,  he  owed  almostevery  thing.  He 
studied  with  intensity  mathematics,  and  metaphysics,  and 
physiology;  before  he  was  nineteen  he  began  to  study 
chemistry,  and  in  four  months  proposed  a  new  hypothe- 
sis on  heat  and  light,  to  which  he  won  over  the  expe- 
rienced Dr.  Beddoes.  With  his  associate  Gregory  Watt 
(son  of  the  celebrated  James  Watt),  he  collected  speci- 
mens of  rocks  and  minerals.  He  made  considerable  prog- 
ress in  medicine ;  he  experimented  zealously,  especially 
011  the  effects  of  the  gases  in  respiration :  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one  he  had  breathed  nitrous  oxide,  and  nearly 
lost  his  life  from  breathing  carbureted  hydrogen.  Next 
year  he  commenced  the  galvanic  experiments  which  led 
to  some  of  his  greatest  discoveries.  In  1802  he  began 
his  brilliant  scientific  career  at  the  Royal  Institution, 
where  he  remained  till  1812;  here  he  constructed  his 
great  voltaic  battery  of  2000  double  plates  of  copper  and 
zinc,  and  commenced  the  mineralogical  collection  now  in 
the  Museum.  His  lectures  were  often  attended  by  1000 
persons :  his  youth,  his  simplicity,  his  natural  eloquence, 
his  chemical  knowledge,  his  happy  illustrations  and  well- 
conducted  experiments,  and  the  auspicious  state  of  sci- 
ence, insured  Davy  great  and  instant  success. 

The  enthusiastic  admiration  with  which  he  was  hailed 
can  hardly  be  imagined  now.  Not  only  men  of  the 
highest  rank — men  of  science,  men  of  letters,  and  men  of 
trade — but  women  of  fashion  and  blue-stockings,  old  and 
young,  pressed  into  the  theatre  of  the  institution  to  cover 
him  with  applause.  His  greatest  labors  were  his  dis- 
covery of  the  decomposition  of  the  fixed  alkalies,  and 
the  re-establishment  of  the  simple  nature  of  chlorine : 
his  other  researches  were  the  investigation  of  astringent 
vegetables  in  connection  with  the  art  of  tanning ;  the 


THE    SAFETY-LAMP.  345 

analysis  of  rocks  and  minerals  in  connection  with  ge- 
ology ;  the  comprehensive  subject  of  agricultural  chem- 
istry ;  and  galvanism  and  electro-chemical  science.  He 
was  also  an  early  but  unsuccessful  experimenter  in  the 
photographic  art. 

Of  the  lazy  conservative  spirit  and  ludicrous  indolence 
in  science  which  at  this  time  attempted  to  hoodwink  the 
public,  a  quaint  instance  is  recorded  of  a  worthy  profess- 
or of  chemistry  at  Aberdeen.  He  had  allowed  some 
years  to  pass  over  Davy's  brilliant  discovery  of  potassium 
and  its  congeneric  metals  without  a  wrord  about  them  in 
his  lectures.  At  length  the  learned  doctor  was  concussed 
by  his  colleagues  on  the  subject,  and  he  condescended  to 
notice  it.  "Both  potash  and  soda  are  now  said  to  be 
metallic  oxydes,"  said  he ;  "  the  oxydes,  in  fact,  of  two 
metals,  called  potassium  and  sodium  by  the  discoverer  of 
them,  one  Davy,  in  London,  a  verra  troublesome  person 
in  chemistry."* 

Turn  we,  however,  to  the  brightest  event  in  our  chem- 
ical philosopher's  career.  By  his  unrivaled  series  of 
practical  discoveries,  Davy  acquired  such  a  reputation 
for  success  among  his  countrymen  that  his  aid  was  in- 
voked on  every  great  occasion.  The  properties  of  fire- 
damp, or  carbureted  hydrogen  in  coal  mines,  had  already 
been  ascertained  by  Dr.  Henry.  When  this  gas  is  min- 
gled in  certain  proportions  with  atmospheric  air,  it  forms 
a  mixture  wThich  kindles  upon  the  contact  of  a  lighted 
candle,  and  often  explodes  with  tremendous  violence, 
killing  the  men  and  horses,  and  projecting  much  of  the 
contents  of  the  mine  through  the  shafts  or  apertures  like 
an  enormous  piece  of  artillery.  Soon  after,  a  detonation 
of  fire-damp  occurred  within  a  coal  mine  in  the  north  of 
England,  so  dreadful  that  it  destroyed  more  than  a  hund- 
red miners.  A  committee  of  the  proprietors  besought 
our  chemist  to  provide  a  method  of  preparing  for  such 
tremendous  visitations,  and  he  did  it.  He  tells  us  that 
he  first  turned  his  attention  particularly  to  the  subject  in 
1815  ;  but  he  must  have  been  prepared  for  it  by  the  re- 
searches of  his  early  years.  Still,  there  appeared  little 
hope  of  finding  an  efficacious  remedy.  The  resources  of 
modern  mechanical  science  had  been  fully  applied  in 

*  North  British  Review,  No.  25. 
P2 


346 

ventilation.  The  comparative  lightness  of  fire-damp  was 
well  understood ;  every  precaution  was  taken  to  pre- 
serve the  communications  open ;  and  the  currents  of 
air  were  promoted  or  occasioned,  not  only  by  furnaces, 
but  likewise  by  air-pumps  and  steam  apparatus.  We 
may  here  mention  that,  for  giving  light  to  the  coal-miner 
or  pitman,  where  the  fire-damp  was  apprehended,  the 
primitive  contrivance  was  a  steel-mill,  the  light  of  which 
was  produced  by  contact  of  a  flint  with  the  edge  of  a 
wheel  kept  in  rapid  motion.  A  "safety-lamp"  had  al- 
ready, in  1813,  been  constructed  by  Dr.  Clanny,  the  prin- 
ciple of  which  was  forcing  in  air  through  water  by  bel- 
lows ;  but  the  machine  was  ponderous  and  complicated, 
and  required  a  boy  to  work  it.  M.  Humboldt  had  pre- 
viously, in  1796,  executed  a  lamp  for  mines  upon  the 
same  principle  as  that  of  Dr.  Clanny. 

Davy,  having  conceived  that  flame  and  explosion  may 
be  regulated  and  arrested,  began  a  minute  chemical  ex- 
amination of  fire-damp.  He  found  that  carbureted  hy- 
drogen gas,  even  when  mixed  with  fourteen  times  its 
bulk  of  atmospheric  air,  was  still  explosive.  He  ascer- 
tained that  explosions  of  inflammable  gases  were  in- 
capable of  being  passed  through  long  narrow  metallic 
tubes,  and  that  this  principle  of  security  was  still  obtain- 
ed by  diminishing  their  length  and  diameter  at  the  same 
time,  and  likewise  diminishing  their  length  and  increas- 
ing their  number,  so  that  a  great  number  of  small  aper- 
tures would  not  pass  explosion  when  their  depth  was 
equal  to  their  diameter.  This  fact  led  to  trials  upon 
sieves  of  wire-gauze ;  he  found  that  if  a  piece  of  wire- 
gauze  was  held  over  the  flame  of  a  lamp,  or  coal-gas,  it 
prevented  the  flame  from  passing;  and  he  ascertained 
that  a  flame  confined  in  a  cylinder  of  very  fine  wire- 
gauze  did  not  explode  even  in  a  mixture  of  oxygen  and 
hydrogen,  but  that  the  gases  burnt  in  it  with  great 
vivacity. 

These  experiments  served  as  the  basis  of  the  Safety- 
lamp.  The  apertures  in  the  gauze,  Davy  tells  us,  in  his 
work  on  the  subject,  should  not  be  more  than  l-22d  of 
an  inch  square.  The  lamp  is  screwed  on  to  the  bottom 
of  the  wire-gauze  cylinder,  and  fitted  by  a  tight  ring. 
When  it  is  lighted,  and  gradually  introduced  into  an 


347 

atmosphere  mixed  with  fire-damp,  the  size  and  length  of 
the  flame  are  first  increased.  When  the  inflammable 
gas  forms  as  much  as  1-1 2th  of  the  volume  of  air,  the 
cylinder  becomes  filled  with  a  feeble  blue  flame,  within 
which  the  flame  of  the  wick  burns  brightly;  its  light 
continues  till  the  fire-damp  increases  to  l-6th  or  l-5th, 
when  it  is  lost  in  the  flame  of  the  fire-damp,  which  now 
fills  the  cylinder  with  a  pretty  strong  light ;  but  when 
the  foul  air  constitutes  l-3d  of  the  atmosphere,  it  is  no 
longer  fit  for  respiration,  and  this  ought  to  be  a  signal  to 
the  miner  to  leave  that  part  of  the  workings. 

Sir  Humphrey  Davy  presented  his  first  communication 
respecting  his  discovery  of  the  Safety-lamp  to  the  Royal 
Society  in  1815.  This  was  followed  by  a  series  of  pa- 
pers, crowned  by  that  read  on  the  llth  of  January,  1816, 
when  the  principle  of  the  Safety-lamp  was  announced, 
and  Sir  Humphrey  presented  to  the  Society  a  model 
made  by  his  own  hands,  which  is  to  this  day  preserved 
in  the  collection  of  the  Royal  Society  at  Burlington 
House.  From  this  interesting  memorial  the  accompany- 
ing vignette  has  been  sketched. 


Model  of  the  Safety-lamp,  made  by  Sir  Humphrey  Davy'a  own  hands ;  in  the 
possession  of  the  Royal  Society. 

There  have  been  several  modifications  of  the  Safety- 
lamp,  and  the  merit  of  the  discovery  has  been  claimed 
by  others,  among  whom  was  Mr.  George  Stephenson; 
but  the  question  was  set  at  rest  in  1817  by  an  examina- 


348  EFFECTS    OF    THE    SAFETY-LAMP. 

tion,  attested  by  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  P.R.S.,  Mr.  Brande, 
Mr.  Hatchett,  and  Dr.  Wollaston,  and  awarding  the  in- 
dependent merit  to  Davy. 

It  should  be  explained  that  Stephenson's  lamp  was 
formed  on  the  principle  of  admitting  the  fire-damp  by 
narrow  tubes,  and  "  in  such  small  detached  portions  that 
it  would  be  consumed  by  combustion."  The  two  lamps 
were  doubtless  distinct  inventions ;  though  Davy,  in  all 
justice,  appears  to  be  entitled  to  precedence,  not  only  in 
point  of  date,  but  as  regards  the  long  chain  of  inductive 
reasoning  concerning  the  nature  of  flame  by  which  his 
result  was  arrived  at. 

Meanwhile,  the  report  by  the  Parliamentary  Commit- 
tee "  can  not  admit  that  the  experiments  (made  with  the 
lamp)  have  any  tendency  to  detract  from  the  character 
of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  or  to  disparage  the  fair  value 
placed  by  himself  upon  his  invention.  The  improve- 
ments are  probably  those  which  longer  life  and  addi- 
tional facts  would  have  induced  him  to  contemplate  as 
desirable,  and  of  which,  had  he  not  been  the  inventor, 
he  might  have  become  the  patron." 

"  I  value  it,"  Davy  used  to  say  with  the  kindliest  ex- 
ultation, "  more  than  any  thing  I  ever  did :  it  was  the 
result  of  a  great  deal  of  investigation  and  labor ;  but,  if 
my  directions  be  attended  to,  it  will  save  the  lives  of 
thousands  of  poor  men." 

The  principle  of  the  invention  may  be  thus  summed 
up.  In  the  Safety-lamp,  the  mixture  of  the  fire-damp 
and  atmospheric  air  within  the  cage  of  wire-gauze  ex- 
plodes upon  coming  in  contact  with  the  flame,  but  the 
combustion  can  not  pass  through  the  wire-gauze,  and, 
being  there  imprisoned,  can  not  impart  to  the  explosive 
atmosphere  of  the  mine  any  of  its  force.  This  effect  has 
been  attributed  to  the  cooling  influence  of  the  metal ; 
but,  since  the  wires  may  be  brought  to  a  degree  of  heat 
but  little  below  redness  without  igniting  the  fire-damp, 
this  does  not  appear  to  be  the  cause. 

Professor  Playfair  has  elegantly  characterized  the  Safety-lamp  of 
Davy  as  a  present  from  Philosophy  to  the  Arts ;  a  discovery  in  no 
degree  the  effect  of  accident  or  chance,  but  the  result  of  patient  and 
enlightened  research,  and  strongly  exemplifying  the  great  use  of  an 
immediate  and  constant  appeal  to  experiment.  After  characterizing 
the  invention  as  the  shutting  up  in  a  net  of  the  most  slender  texture  of  a 


SIR    HUMPHREY    DAVY.  349 

most  violent  and  irresistible  force,  and  a  power  that  in  its  tremendous 
effects  seems  to  emulate  the  lightning  and  the  earthquake,  Professor 
Playfair  thus  concludes :  "  When  to  this  we  add  the  beneficial  conse- 
quences, and  the  saving  of  the  lives  of  men,  and  consider  that  the 
effects  are  to  remain  as  long  as  coal  continues  to  be  dug  from  the 
bowels  of  the  earth,  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  there  is  hardly  in  the 
whole  compass  of  art  or  science  a  single  invention  of  which  one  would 
rather  wish  to  be  the  author.  .  .  .  This,"  says  Professor  Playfair, 
"is  exactly  such  a  case  as  we  should  choose  to  place  before  Bacon 
were  he  to  revisit  the  earth,  in  order  to  give  him,  in  a  small  com- 
pass, an  idea  of  the  advancement  which  philosophy  has  made  since 
the  time  when  he  had  pointed  out  to  her  the  route  which  she  ought  to 
pursue." 

Honors  were  showered  upon  Davy.  He  received  from 
the  Royal  Society  the  Copley,  Royal,  and  Rumford  Med- 
als, and  several  times  delivered  the  Bakerian  Lecture. 
He  also  received  Napoleon's  prize  for  the  advancement 
of  galvanic  researches  from  the  French  Institute.  The 
invention  of  the  Safety-lamp  brought  him  the  public 
gratitude  of  the  united  colliers  of  Whitehaven,  of  the 
coal  proprietors  of  the  north  of  England,  of  the  grand 
jury  of  Durham,  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  at  Mons, 
of  the  coal-miners  of  Flanders,  and,  above  all,  of  the  coal- 
owners  of  the  Wear  and  the  Tyne,  who  presented  him 
(it  was  his  own  choice)  with  a  dinner-service  of  silver 
worth  £2500.  On  the  same  occasion,  Alexander,  the 
Emperor  of  ftll  the  Russias,  sent  him  a  vase,  with  a  letter 
of  commendation.  In  1817  he  was  elected  to  the  dignity 
of  an  Associate  of  the  Institute  of  France ;  next  year,  at 
the  age  of  forty,  he  was  created  a  baronet. 

Davy's  discoveries  form  a  remarkable  epoch  in  the 
history  of  the  Royal  Society  during  the  early  part  of 
this  century,  and  from  1821  to  1829  almost  every  volume 
of  the  Transactions  contains  a  communication  by  him. 
He  was  President  of  the  Royal  Society  from  1820  to 
1827.  His  administration  was  not  altogether  satisfac- 
tory ;  he  was  too  sensitive.  "  Above  all,  he  was  disap- 
pointed in  his  life-long  foolish  hope  of  one  day  moving 
the  government  of  Britain  to  patronize  the  cause  of  sci- 
ence"— as  great  an  improbability  in  the  present  day  as  it 
was  in  poor  Davy's  time. 

„  Fond  of  travel,  geology,  and  sport,  Davy  visited,  for 
the  purpose  of  mineralogy  and  the  angle,  almost  every 
county  of  England  and  Wales.  He  was  provided  with 


350  DAVY    AND    FARADAY. 

a  portable  laboratory,  that  he  might  experiment  when 
he  chose,  as  well  as  fish  and  shoot.  In  1827,  upon  re- 
signing the  presidency  of  the  Royal  Society,  he  retired 
to  the  Continent;  in  1829,  at  Geneva,  his  palsy-stricken 
body  returned  to  the  dust.  They  buried  him  at  Geneva, 
where  a  simple  monument  stands  at  the  head  of  the  hos- 
pitable grave.  There  is  a  tablet  to  his  memory  in  West- 
minster Abbey ;  there  is  a  monument  at  Penzance ;  and 
his  widow  founded  a  memorial  chemical  prize  in  the 
University  of  Geneva.  "  His  public  services  of  plate,  his 
imperial  vases,  his  foreign  prizes,  his  royal  medals,  shall 
be  handed  down  with  triumph  to  his  collateral  posterity 
as  trophies  won  from  the  depths  of  nescience ;  but  his 
WORK,  designed  by  his  own  genius,  executed  by  his  own 
hand,  tracery  and  all,  and  every  single  stone  signalized 
by  his  own  private  mark,  indelible,  characteristic,  and 
inimitable — his  WORK  is  the  only  record  of  his  name. 
How  deeply  are  its  foundations  rooted  in  space,  and  how 
lasting  its  materials  for  time !"  (JVbrth  British  Review, 
No.  3.) 

One  of  the  most  pleasing  episodes  in  the  life  of  Davy 
is  the  account  of  his  first  reception  of  Michael  Faraday, 
described  by  the  latter  in  a  note  to  Dr.  Paris : 

"When  I  was  a  bookseller's  apprentice,"  says  Faraday,  "I  was 
very  fond  of  experiment,  and  very  averse  to  trade.  It  happened  that 
a  gentleman,  a  member  of  the  Royal  Institution,  took  me  to  hear  some 
of  Sir  H.  Davy's  last  lectures  in  Albemarle  Street.  I  took  notes,  and 
afterward  wrote  them  out  more  fairly  in  a  quarto  volume. 

"My  desire  to  escape  from  trade,  which  I  thought  vicious  and  self- 
ish, and  to  enter  into  the  service  of  science,  which  I  imagined  made 
its  pursuers  amiable  and  liberal,  induced  me  at  last  to  take  the  bold 
step  of  writing  to  Sir  H.  Davy,  expressing  my  wishes,  and  a  hope  that, 
if  an  opportunity  came  in  his  way,  he  would  favor  my  views ;  and  at 
the  same  time  I  sent  the  notes  I  had  taken  of  his  lectures." 

To  this  application  Sir  H.  Davy  replied  as  follows : 

To  MR.  FARADAY. 

"December  24, 1812. 

"  SIR, — I  am  far  from  displeased  with  the  proof  you  have  given  me 
of  your  confidence,  and  which  displays  great  zeal,  power  of  memory, 
and  attention.  I  am  obliged  to  go  out  of  town  till  the  end  of  Janu- 
ary :  I  will  then  see  you  at  any  time  you  wish. 

' '  It  would  gratify  me  to  be  of  any  service  to  you.  I  wish  it  may 
be  in  my  power. 

"  I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  humble  servant,  H.  DAVY." 


DAVY   AND   FARADAY.  351 

Early  in  1813  Davy  requested  to  see  Faraday,  and  told 
him  of  the  situation  of  assistant  in  the  Laboratory  of 
the  Royal  Institution,  to  which,  through  Sir  Humphrey's 
good  efforts,  Faraday  was  appointed.  In  the  same  year 
he  went  abroad  with  Davy  as  his  assistant  in  experi- 
ments and  in  writing.  Faraday  returned  in  1815  to  the 
Royal  Institution,  and  has  ever  since  remained  there. 

There  can  not  be  a  better  testimony  than  the  above 
circumstance  to  Davy's  goodness  of  heart. 


CAECEL  AND  HIS  LAMP. 

To  Carcel,  the  clockmaker  of  Paris,  we  owe  the  solu- 
tion of  an  important  difficulty  in  lamp-making — the  avoid- 
ance of  the  projection  of  the  shade  from  the  reservoir. 
In  a  lamp  which  he  constructed,  Carcel  made  the  reser- 
voir for  oil  at  the  lower  part  of  the  lamp,  and  placed 
close  to  it  a  clock-work  which  moved  a  little  force-pump, 
the  piston  of  which  raised  the  oil  as  far  as  the  wick. 
The  spring  was  reached  by  means  of  a  key.  The  me- 
chanical means  employed  by  Carcel  for  raising  the  oil  to 
the  burner  were  as  ingenious  as  elegant ;  therefore  have 
we  changed  nothing  of  the  principle  of  the  inventor's 
lamp.  The  wheel-work  that  he  adopted  has  always  been 
retained,  the  improvements  being  secondary  points  in 
the  mechanism. 

Carcel  drew  but  a  small  profit  from  his  important  dis- 
covery. Like  many  originators  of  useful  inventions,  to 
whom  we  are  indebted  for  the  luxury  and  ease  of  actual 
life,  he  left  to  others  the  profits  and  benefit  of  his  works. 
He  died  in  1812,  full  of  infirmities.  Life  had  been  to 
him  but  a  long  and  painful  struggle.  When  he  wished 
to  patent  and  secure  to  himself  the  property  of  his  dis- 
covery, and  to  commence  the  use  of  it,  he  was  obliged 
to  have  recourse  to  a  partner  to  find  the  necessary  funds. 
It  was  the  apothecary  Carreau  who  joined  him:  thus 
the  patent  which  was  delivered  the  24th  of  October, 
1800,  to  the  inventor  of  the  Mechanical  Lamp,  bore  the 
two  names  of  Carcel  and  Carreau.  But  the  latter  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  discovery,  though  his  intervention 
in  the  enterprise  was  not  without  its  advantages.  Car- 
cel, greatly  discouraged,  would  not  have  followed  up  the 
work  he  ha*d  proposed  for  himself  had  it  not  been  for  the 
entreaties  and  encouragement  of  his  friend.  However, 
the  term  of  the  patent  expired  without  having  brought 
any  important  profit  to  the  two  partners.  In  the  Rue 
de  PArbre  Sec  at  Paris  may  still  be  seen  the  old  shop  of 
Carcel,  occupied  to  this  day  by  a  member  of  his  family, 


CARCEL    AND    HIS    LAMP.  353 

bearing  this  sign — "Carcel,  Inventeur"  In  the  door- 
way of  this  simple  shop  may  be  seen  the  first  model  of 
the  lamp  which  Carcel  constructed.  The  hot  air  which 
passes  from  the  glass  chimney  of  the  lamp  serves  to  put 
in  motion  the  mechanism  by  which  the  oil  is  raised  to 
the  burner.  On  other  lamps  is  clock-work,  constructed 
as  by  Carcel,  the  needles  of  which  are  put  in  action  by 
the  same  mechanism  which  raises  the  combustible  liquid. 
— From  the  Engineer  journal,  1857. 


GAS-LIGHTING. 

THE  production  of  hydrogen  gas  in  a  tobacco-pipe  by 
filling  the  bowl  with  powdered  coal,  then  luting  it  over 
and  placing  it  in  a  fire,  is  well  known ;  but  even  more 
familiar  are  the  alternate  bursting  out  and  extinction  of 
those  burning  jets  of  pitchy  vapor,  which  contribute  to 
render  a  common  fire  an  object  so  lively,  and  of  such 
agreeable  contemplation  in  the  winter  evenings.  We 
may  pursue  the  subject  in  tracing  the  brilliant  lights  by 
which  our  streets  are  illuminated  from  the  obscure  re- 
cesses of  nature,  and  showing  by  what  steps  that  which 
was  once  thought  simply  an  object  of  curiosity  has  been 
applied  to  a  practical  purpose  of  the  most  useful  and 
agreeable  kind ;  which  an  able  writer,  in  showing  what 
had  been  done  with  the  gases,  felicitously  illustrated : 
"  One  species,  or  rather  a  variable  mixture  of  two  or 
three,  composed  of  carbon  and  hydrogen,  is  made  in  the 
outskirts  of  nearly  every  town  now-a-days,  in  enormous 
quantities,  and  then  sent  away  from  a  huge  trough  or 
jar,  or  from  a  heart,  to  circulate  through  a  system  of 
metallic  arteries,  for  the  purpose  of  lighting  streets  and 
houses." 

The  existence  and  inflammability  of  coal-gas  have  been 
known  in  England  for  two  centuries.  In  the  year  1659 
Thomas  Shirley  correctly  attributed  the  exhalations  from 
"  the  burning  well"  at  Wigan,  in  Lancashire,  to  the  coal- 
beds  which  lie  under  that  part  of  the  county ;  and  soon 
after,  Dr.  Clayton,  influenced  by  the  reasoning  of  Shirley, 
actually  made  coal-gas,  and  detailed  the  results  of  his  la- 
bors in  a  letter  to  the  Hon.  Robert  Boyle,  who  died  in 
1691.  He  says  he  distilled  coal  in  a  retort,  and  that  the 
contents  were  phlegm,  black  oil,  and  a  spirit  which  he 
was  unable  to  condense,  but  which  he  confined  in  a  blad- 
der. These  are  precisely  wrhat  we  now  find,  but  under 
different  names :  the  phlegm  is  water,  the  black  oil  is 
coal-tar,  and  the  spirit  is  gas.  Dr.  Clayton  several  times 
repeated  the  experiment,  and  frequently  amused  his 


GAS-LIGHTING   IN   CHINA.  355 

friends  with  burning  the  gas  as  it  came  from  the  bladder 
through  holes  made  in  it  with  a  pin.  "  This  is  a  hint 
which,  in  an  age  more  alive  to  economic  improvement, 
might  have  brought  Gas-lighting  into  operation  a  cen- 
tury earlier,  though  the  mechanical  difficulties  might 
have  been  too  great  to  overcome  at  that  period;  a  cir- 
cumstance which  has  retarded  the  introduction  of  so 
many  valuable  discoveries,  as  it  did  that  of  the  steam- 
boat and  printing-machine."* 

About  a  century  later  (1753)  Sir  James  Lowther  com- 
municated to  the  Royal  Society  a  notice  of  a  spontaneous 
evolution  of  gas  at  a  colliery  belonging  to  him  near  White- 
haven.  While  his  men  were  at  work,  they  were  surprised 
by  a  rush  of  air,  which  caught  fire  at  the  approach  of  a 
candle,  and  burned  with  a  flame  two  yards  high  and  one 
yard  in  diameter ;  they  were  much  frightened,  but  put 
the  flame  out  by  flapping  it  with  their  hats,  and  then  all 
ran  away.  The  steward  of  the  works,  hearing  this,  went 
down  himself,  lighted  the  air  again,  which  had  now  in- 
creased, and  had  some  difficulty  in  extinguishing  it.  It 
was  found  to  annoy  the  workmen  so  much  that  a  tube 
was  made  to  carry  it  off.  The  tube  projected  four  yards 
above  the  pit,  and  at  the  extremity  of  it  the  gas  rushed 
out  with  much  force.  "  The  gas  being  fired,"  says  the 
account,  "  it  has  now  been  burning  two  years  and  nine 
months  without  any  sign  of  decrease."  Large  bladders 
were  filled  in  a  few  seconds  from  the  end  of  the  tube, 
and  carried  away  by  persons,  who  fitted  little  pipes  to 
them,  and  burned  the  gas  at  their  own  convenience. 
We  do  not  learn  what  became  of  this  copious  supply ;  it 
probably  diminished  as  the  coal-bed  was  exhausted. 

Soon  after  the  middle  of  the  last  century  Bishop  Wat- 
son made  many  experiments  on  coal-gas,  which  he  details 
in  his  Chemical  Essays :  he  distilled  the  coal,  passed  the 
gas  through  water,  conveyed  it  through  pipes  from  one 
place  to  another,  and  did  so  much  that  we  are  only  sur- 
prised he  did  not  introduce  it  into  general  use. 

Meanwhile  the  use  of  Gas  had  long  been  known  in  a 
distant  part  of  the  world.  "  Whether,  or  to  what  ex- 
tent," says  Mr.  R.  C.  Taylor,  on  the  coal-fields  of  China, 
"the  Chinese  artificially  produce  illuminating  gas  from 
*  Penny  Cyclopaedia,  art,  "Gas-lighting." 


356  EARLY    GAS-LIGHTING   EXPERIMENTS. 

bitumen  coal,  we  are  uncertain.  But  it  is  a  fact  that 
spontaneous  jets  of  gas,  derived  from  boring  into  coal- 
beds,  have  for  centuries  been  burning,  and  turned  to  that 
and  other  economical  purposes.  If  the  Chinese  are  not 
manufacturers,  they  are  nevertheless  gas  consumers  and 
employers  on  a  large  scale,  and  have  evidently  been  so 
ages  before  the  knowledge  of  its  application  was  acquired 
by  Europeans.  Beds  of  coal  are  frequently  pierced  by 
the  borers  of  salt  water,  and  the  inflammable  gas  is  forced 
up  in  jets  twenty  or  thirty  feet  in  height.  From  these 
fountains  the  vapor  has  been  conveyed  to  the  salt-works 
in  pipes,  and  there  used  for  the  boiling  and  evaporating 
of  the  salt ;  and  other  tubes  convey  the  gas  intended  for 
lighting  the  streets  and  the  larger  apartments  and  kitch- 
ens."* 

To  return  to  England.  Although  the  properties  of 
coal-gas  were  known  here  so  long  ago,  no  one  thought 
of  applying  it  permanently  to  a  useful  object  until  the 
year  1792,  when  Mr.  Murdoch,  an  engineer  at  Redruth, 
in  Cornwall,  erected  a  little  gasometer  and  apparatus, 
which  produced  gas  enough  to  light  his  own  house  and 
offices.  Murdoch  appears  to  have  had  no  imitators,  but 
he  was  not  discouraged ;  and  in  1797  he  erected  a  similar 
apparatus  in  Ayrshire,  where  he  then  resided.  In  the 
following  year  he  was  engaged  to  put  up  a  gas-work  at 
the  manufactory  of  Boulton  and  Watt  at  Soho.  This 
was  the  first  application  of  gas  in  a  large  way ;  but,  ex- 
cepting in  manufactories  or  among  scientific  men,  it  ex- 
cited little  attention  until  the  year  1802,  when  the  front 
of  the  great  Soho  manufactory  was  brilliantly  illuminated 
with  gas  on  the  occasion  of  the  public  rejoicings  at  the 
Peace.  All  Birmingham  poured  forth  to  view  the  spec- 
tacle, and  strangers  carried  to  every  part  of  the  country 
an  account  of  what  they  had  seen.  It  was  spread  about 
every  where  by  the  newspapers  ;  easy  modes  of  making 
gas  were  described;  and  coal  was  experimentally  dis- 
tilled in  tobacco-pipes  at  the  fireside  all  over  the  kingdom. 

*  Mr.  Taylor  notices  the  singular  counterpart  to  this  employment 
of  natural  gas  in  the  valley  of  Kanawha  in  Virginia.  The  geological 
origin,  the  means  of  supply,  the  application  to  all  the  purposes  of 
manufacturing  salt,  and  of  the  surplus  to  illumination,  are  remarkably 
alike  at  such  distant  points  as  China  and  the  United  States. 


GAS-LIGHTING    LONDON.  357 

Soon  after  this,  several  manufacturers  adopted  the  use  of 
gas :  a  button  manufactory  at  Birmingham  used  it  largely 
for  soldering ;  Mr.  Samuel  Clegg  first  began  to  construct 
gas  apparatus,  and  about  1 806  exhibited  gas-lights  in  the 
front  of  his  manufactory.  Halifax,  Manchester,  and  other 
towns  followed. 

A  single  cotton-mill  at  Manchester  used  about  900 
burners,  and  had  several  miles  of  pipe  laid  down  to  sup- 
ply them ;  and  Mr.  Murdoch,  who  erected  the  apparatus 
used  in  this  mill,  sent  a  detailed  account  of  his  operations 
to  the  Royal  Society  in  1808,  for  which  he  received  their 
gold  medal.  The  success  of  Gas-lighting  in  the  cotton 
factory  was  striking:  it  was  very  soon  adopted  for  the 
softness,  clearness,  and  unvarying  intensity  of  the  light ; 
and  it  was  free  from  the  inconvenience  and  danger  re- 
sulting from  the  sparks  and  frequent  snuffing  of  candles, 
which  tended  to  diminish  the  hazard  of  fire,  and  lessen 
the  high  insurance  premium  on  cotton-mills. 

Previous  to  the  public  display  of  Gas  at  Soho,  it  had, 
however,  been  applied  to  similar  purposes  by  a  M.  Le  Bon 
at  Paris,  who  in  1801  lighted  up  his  house  and  gardens 
with  the  gas  obtained  from  wood  and  coal,  and  had  it  in 
contemplation  to  light  up  the  city  of  Paris ;  but  we  find 
nothing  farther  recorded  of  M.  Le  Bon's  results. 

Thus  we  see  that,  although  the  Chinese  have  for  ages 
employed  natural  coal-gas  for  lighting  their  streets  and 
houses,  only  within  the  present  century  has  gas  supersed- 
ed in  London  the  dim  oil-lights  and  crystal-glass  lamps 
of  the  preceding  century.  Dr.  Johnson  is  said  to  have 
had  a  prevision  of  this  change  when,  one  evening,  from 
the  window  of  his  house  in  Bolt  Court,  he  observed  the 
parish  lamplighter  ascend  a  ladder  to  light  one  of  the 
small  oil-lamps.  He  had  scarcely  descended  the  ladder 
half  wTay  when  the  flame  expired.  Quickly  returning,  he 
lifted  the  cover  of  the  lamp  partially,  and  thrusting  the 
end  of  his  torch  beneath  it,  the  flame  wras  instantly  com- 
municated to  the  wick  by  the  thick  vapor  which  issued 
from  it.  "  Ah !"  exclaimed  the  doctor,  "  one  of  these 
days  the  streets  of  London  will  be  lighted  by  smoke" 
(Notes  and  Queries,  No.  127). 

The  use  of  gas,  however,  made  but  slow  progress  in 
the  metropolis :  it  was  dirty  and  disagreeable,  and  no 


358  WINSOK'S    GAS-LIGHTING. 

means  had  yet  been  found  for  purifying  the  gas,  though 
lectures  were  delivered  and  experiments  made  upon  the 
subject  by  a  German  named  Frederick  Albert  Winsor. 
In  1803  and  1804  he  lighted  the  old  Lyceum  theatre. 
He  took  out  a  patent  in  1804,  and  issued  a  prospectus 
of  a  National  Light  and  Heat  Company,  promising  sub- 
scribers of  £5  at  least  £570  per  cent,  per  annum,  with  a 
prospect  of  ten  times  as  much.  A  subscription  was 
raised,  it  is  said,  of  £50,000,  which  was  expended  in  ex- 
periments, without  profit  to  the  subscribers,  although 
Winsor  gained  experience,  and  the  important  process  of 
purifying  gas  by  lime.  In  1807  he  lighted  one  side  of 
Pall  Mall ;  on  the  king's  birthday,  June  4,  he  brilliantly 
illuminated  the  wall  between  Pall  Mall  and  St.  James's 
Park;  and  on  August  16  exhibited  gas-light  in  Golden 
Lane.  In  1809  the  National  Light  and  Heat  Company 
applied  to  Parliament  for  a  charter,  but  they  were  op- 


Frederick  Albert  Winsor,  Projector  of  Street  Gas-lighting. 

posed  by  Mr.  Murdoch  on  the  score  of  prior  discovery, 
and  the  charter  was  refused.  It  was,  however,  subse- 
quently granted,  and  in  1810  was  established  the  Gas- 
light and  Coke  Company,  in  Cannon  Row,  Westminster ; 
removed  to  Peter  Street,  or  Horse-ferry  Road,  previous- 
ly the  site  of  a  market-garden,  poplars,  and  a  tea-garden. 
Soon  after  an  extensive  explosion  took  place  on  the 


OPINION    OF   THE   EOYAL   SOCIETY.  359 

premises,  when  a  committee  of  the  Royal  Society  was, 
at  the  request  of  the  government,  appointed  to  investi- 
gate the  matter.  They  met  several  times  at  the  gas- 
works to  examine  the  apparatus,  and  made  a  very  elabo- 
rate report,  in  which  they  stated  as  their  opinion  that, 
if  Gas-lighting  was  to  become  prevalent,  the  works  ought 
to  be  placed  at  a  considerable  distance  from  all  build- 
ings, and  that  the  reservoirs  should  be  small  and  numer- 
ous, and  always  separated  from  each  other  by  mounds 
of  earth,  or  strong  party- walls.  This  committee  consisted 
of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Sir  C.  Blagden,  Col.  Congreve,  Mr. 
Lawson,  Mr.  Rennie,  and  Dr.  Young.  In  the  company's 
application  to  Parliament,  one  of  their  witnesses,  Mr.  Ac- 
cuni,  the  chemist,  was  bitterly  ridiculed  by  Mr.  Brougham, 
F.R.S. ;  and  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  asked  if  it  were  intend- 
ed to  take  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  for  a  gasometer !  In 
short,  as  Dr.  Arnott  remarks,  "Davy,  Wollastou,  and 
Watt  at  first  gave  an  opinion  that  coal-gas  could  never 
be  safely  applied  to  the  purpose  of  street-lighting."  How- 
ever, the  invention  progressed,  and  in  1822  St.  James's 
Park  was  first  lighted  with  gas.  Its  safety  was  not, 
however,  yet  established;  for  in  1825,  on  the  part  of 
government,  a  committee  of  the  most  eminent  scientific 
men  minutely  inspected  the  gas-works,  and  reported  that 
the  occasional  superintendence  of  all  the  works  was  nec- 
essary. 

Of  the  general  process  of  making  Gas  we  need  only 
state  that  it  is  obtained  from  coal  inclosed  in  red-hot 
cast-iron  or  clay  cylinders  or  retorts,  when  hydro-carbon 
gases  are  evolved,  and  coke  left  behind ;  the  gas,  being 
carried  away  by  wide  tubes,  is  next  cooled  and  washed 
with  water,  and  then  exposed  to  lime  in  close  purifiers. 
It  is  then  stored  in  sheet-iron  gas-holders,  miscalled  gas- 
ometers, some  of  which  hold  700,000  cubic  feet  of  gas ; 
and  the  several  London  companies  have  storage  for  ten 
million  cubic  feet  of  gas.  Thence  it  is  driven  by  the 
weight  of  the  gas-holders  through  cast-iron  mains  or 
pipes  under  the  streets,  and  from  them  by  wrought-iron 
service-pipes  to  the  lamps  and  burners :  of  the  gas-mams 
there  are  2000  miles. 

The  London  Gas  Company's  works  at  Vauxhall  are 
the  most  powerful  and  complete  in  the  world :  from  this 


360  GAS-LIGHTING. 

point  their  mains  pass  across  Vauxhall  Bridge  to  west- 
ern London,  and  by  Westminster  and  Waterloo  Bridges 
to  Hampstead  and  Highgate,  seven  miles  distant,  where 
they  supply  gas  with  the  same  precision  and  abundance 
as  at  Vauxhall.  Their  pipes  extend  150  miles. 

Gas-lighting  has  been  extended  from  London  through- 
out Great  Britain,  so  that  there  is  now  scarcely  a  small 
town  not  lighted  by  gas.  The  Continental  cities  slowly 
followed  our  example ;  and  it  has  reached  our  antipodes. 

Gas  has  been  made  from  oil  and  resin,  but  is  too  costly 
for  street-lighting.  Wood  and  peat  are  also  used.  In 
Ireland  a  village  has  been  lighted  with  gas  made  from 
bog-turf.  Gas-lights  are  also  used  in  coal-mines,  greatly 
facilitating  the  operations  of  the  colliers.  The  greater 
cheapness  of  coal,  in  those  places  where  it  can  be  pro- 
cured, will  probably  always  place  it  above  any  other  ma- 
terial that  could  be  proposed  for  the  manufacture  of  gas. 

The  Lime-ball,  the  Bude,  and  the  Electric  Lights  are 
too  expensive  for  street-lighting.  Some  of  the  processes 
of  artificial  illumination  have  been  costly  failures :  upon 
the  Patent  Air-light  (from  hydrocarbons  mixed  with 
atmospheric  air),  proposed  in  1838,  upward  of  £30,000 
were  expended  unsuccessfully.  The  Atmospheric  Bude 
Light  is  the  result  of  numerous  experiments  made  by 
Mr.  Goldsworthy  Gurney,  of  Bude,  in  Cornwall,  and  is 
now  extensively  employed  in  lighting  churches  and  other 
large  buildings.  Originally  it  was  obtained  from  an  oil 
lamp,  the  flame  from  which  was  acted  upon  by  a  current 
of  oxygen  :  subsequently  oil-gas  was  substituted  for  the 
liquid  oil ;  but  now  the  gas  which  is  made  for  lighting 
the  streets  of  towns  is  employed  to  produce  the  flame, 
and  the  brilliancy  is  increased  by  a  current  of  atmos- 
pheric air  ingeniously  introduced.  The  Bude  Light  was 
first  used  for  lighting  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  year 
1 842  :  its  cost  is  about  one  third  the  expense  of  common 
oil,  and  about  one  ninth  that  of  composition  candles. 


JAMES  BRINDLEY  AND  CANAL  NAVIGA- 
TION. 

THE  Canal,  an  artificial  channel  filled  with  water,  is 
used  for  the  transit  of  goods,  for  irrigation,  and  for  bup- 
plying  towns  with  water.  The  New  River,  by  which 
London  is  in  great  part  provided  with  water  from  Hert- 
fordshire, is  a  canal.  The  canals  by  which  ancient  Egypt 
was  intersected  were  used  both  for  navigation  and  irri- 
gation. Canals  are  known  to  have  existed  in  China  be- 
fore the  Christian  era.  The  first  canal  made  in  Europe, 
as  far  as  we  know,  was  cut  by  Xerxes  across  the  low 
isthmus  of  Athos.  Canals  were  made  by  the  Romans  in 
Italy,  and  in  the  Low  Countries  about  the  outlets  of  the 
Rhine ;  and  we  have  reason  to  think  that  they  also  made 
canals  in  Britain.  But  canal-making  in  modern  Europe 
was  first  practiced  by  the  inhabitants  of  North  Italy  and 
Holland.  Works  of  this  kind,  which  are  still  admired 
by  engineers,  were  executed  in  Lombardy  between  the 
eleventh  and  thirteenth  centuries :  the  canal  from  Milan 
to  the  Ticino  was  made  navigable  in  1271.  The  forma- 
tion of  canals  was  begun  in  the  Netherlands  in  the 
twelfth  century,  when  Flanders  became  the  commercial 
entrepot  of  Europe.  Holland  is  intersected  with  canals, 
which  have  been  compared  to  the  public  roads  in  other 
countries. 

The  origin  of  the  present  system  of  English  Canals 
dates  from  the  year  1755,  when  an  Act  of  Parliament 
was  passed  for  constructing  one  eleven  miles  long,  from 
the  mouth  of  Sankey  Brook,  in  the  River  Mersey,  to 
Gerard's  Bridge  and  St.  Helen's.  It  should,  however, 
be  mentioned  that  canals  had  been  previously  known  for 
centuries  in  this  country.  The  canal  from  the  Trent  to 
the  Witham,  which  is  the  oldest  in  England,  is  said  to 
have  been  dug  in  the  year  1134. 

James  Brindley,  who  rose  from  a  childhood  of  poverty 
and  neglect  to  be  a  celebrated  engineer,  was  born  in 
Derbyshire  in  1716.  Through  his  father's  dissipatecl 

Q 


362  JAMES    BRINDLEY. 

habits,  the  boy  was  employed  in  farm  labor,  and  allowed 
to  grow  up  almost  totally  uneducated ;  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  he  was  barely  able  to  read  and  write.  He  is  sup- 
posed, however,  to  have  shown  some  bias  toward  me- 
chanical invention;  for,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  he 
bound  himself  apprentice  to  a  millwright  at  Macclesfield. 
Here  he  was  left  frequently  by  himself  for  whole  weeks 
together,  to  execute  works  concerning  which  his  master 
had  given  him  no  previous  instruction ;  these  he  finished 
in  his  own  way.  On  one  occasion  his  master  was  em- 
ployed to  construct  the  machinery  of  a  new  kind  of 
paper-mill,  and,  although  he  had  inspected  a  mill  in 
which  similar  machinery  was  in  operation,  it  was  report- 
ed that  he  would  be  unable  to  finish  his  contract. 
Brindley  was  informed  of  this  rumor ;  and,  as  soon  as 
he  had  finished  his  week's  work,  he  set  out  for  the  mill, 
took  a  complete  survey  of  the  machinery,  and  after  a 
walk  of  fifty  miles,  reached  home  in  time  to  commence 
work  on  Monday  morning.  Having  thus  made  himself 
perfectly  master  of  the  construction  of  the  mill,  he  com- 
pleted the  machinery,  with  several  improvements  of  his 
own  contrivance. 

Brindley,  on  the  expiration  of  his  apprenticeship,  start- 
ed in  business  on  his  own  account,  but  did  not  confine 
himself  to  the  making  of  mill-machinery.  In  1752  he 
contrived  an  improved  engine  for  draining  some  coal-pits 
at  Clifton,  Lancashire ;  it  was  set  in  motion  by  a  wheel 
30  feet  below  the  surface,  and  the  water  for  turning  it 
was  supplied  from  the  Irwell  by  a  subterraneous  tunnel 
600  yards  long.  In  1755  he  executed  a  portion  of  the 
complex  machinery  for  a  silk-mill  at  Congleton ;  and  in 
the  following  year  he  erected  a  steam-engine  at  New- 
castle-under-Lyne,  which  effected  a  saving  of  one  half  in 
fuel. 

Brindley's  genius  was  constantly  displaying  itself  by 
the  invention  of  the  most  beautiful  and  economical  sim- 
plifications. One  of  these  was  a  method  which  he  con- 
trived for  cutting  all  his  tooth  and  pinion  wheels  by  ma- 
chinery, instead  of  having  them  done  by  hand  as  hitherto. 
This  invention  enabled  him  to  finish  as  much  of  that  sort 
of  work  in  one  day  as  had  formerly  been  accomplished 
in  fourteen. 


THE    BKIDGE WATER    CANAL.  363 

But  the  character  of  Brindley's  mind  was  comprehen- 
siveness and  grandeur  of  conception ;  and  there  speedily 
arose  an  adequate  field  for  the  display  of  his  vast  ideas, 
and  almost  inexhaustible  powers  of  execution.  In  1755 
was  begun  the  first  modern  canal  actually  executed  in 
England — the  Sankey  Brook  Navigation,  eleven  miles 
long.  In  1758  he  commenced,  for  the  Duke  of  Bridge- 
water,  the  celebrated  Bridgewater  Canal,  which  as  now 
completed,  commences  at  Manchester  and  terminates  at 
Runcorn,  and  has  a  branch  to  Worsley  and  Leigh.  One 
of  his  earliest  great  works  was  an  aqueduct  carrying  the 
canal  across  the  Irwell ;  so  that  from  the  aqueduct  may 
often  be  seen  seven  or  eight  men  slowly  dragging  a  boat 
up  the  Irwell  against  the  stream,  while,  about  40  feet 
immediately  over  the  river,  a  horse  or  a  couple  of  men 
are  enabled  to  draw  with  much  greater  rapidity  five  or 
six  barges  fastened  one  to  the  other.  The  canal  from 
Worsley  to  Manchester,  with  the  underground  course 
and  tunnels,  cost  £168,000,  and  is  eighteen  miles  in 
length.  With  the  exception  of  tBe  part  between  Wor- 
sley and  Leigh,  this  canal  was  executed  by  Brindley  in 
five  years. 

While  the  Bridgewater  (Janal  was  yet  in  progress, 
Brindley  commenced  another  canal  passing  through  Staf- 
fordshire, and  uniting  the  Trent  and  the  Mersey.  This 
canal  is  ninety-three  miles  in  length,  has  ninety-six  locks, 
and  passes  over  many  aqueducts  :  it  has  five  tunnels,  one 
of  which,  2880  yards  in  length,  is  cut  through  Harecastle 
Hill,  at  more  than  200  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
earth.  The  canal  was  not  completed  at  Brindley's  death ; 
but  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Henshall,  successfully  finished 
it.  Brindley  also  designed  a  canal,  forty-six  miles  long, 
called  the  Staffordshire  and  Worcestershire  Canal,  for 
the  purpose  of  connecting  the  Grand  Trunk  with  the 
Severn.  He  also  planned  the  Coventry  Canal,  and  super- 
intended the  execution  of  the  Oxford  Canal.  These  un- 
dertakings opened  an  internal  water-communication  be- 
tween the  Thames,  the  Humber,  the  Severn,  and  the 
Mersey,  and  united  the  great  ports  of  London,  Liverpool, 
Bristol,  and  Hull  by  canals  which  passed  through  the 
richest  and  most  industrious  districts  of  England. 

The  canal  from  the  Trent  at  Stockwith  to  Chesterfield, 


364  THE  BRIDGE  WATER  CANAL. 

forty-six  miles  long,  was  Brindley's  last  public  under- 
taking. Phillips,  in  his  History  of  Inland  Navigation, 
says  that  Brindley  pointed  out  the  method  of  building 
walls  against  the  sea  without  mortar;  and  that  he  in- 
vented a  mode  of  drawing  water  out  of  mines  by  a  losing 
and  gaining  bucket. 

Brindley's  designs  were  the  resources  of  his  own  mind 
alone.  When  he  was  beset  with  any  difficulty,  he  se- 
cluded himself,  and  worked  out  unaided  the  means  of 
accomplishing  his  schemes.  Sometimes  he  lay  in  bed 
two  or  three  days ;  but  when  he  arose,  he  proceeded  at 
once  to  carry  his  plans  into  efiect,  without  the  help  of 
drawings  or  models.  He  knew  something  of  figures,  but 
did  not  much  avail  himself  of  their  assistance  in  his  cal- 
culations :  his  habit  was,  to  work  the  'question  chiefly  in 
his  head,  only  setting  down  the  results  at  particular 
stages ;  yet  his  conclusions  were  generally  correct.  He 
died  in  1772,  in  his  fifty-sixth  year. 

Brindley  was  an  enthusiast  in  canal  navigation.  When 
giving  his  professional  evidence  before  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  he  expressed  himself  with  so  much 
contempt  of  rivers  as  means  of  internal  navigation  that  a 
member  was  tempted  to  ask  him  for  what  object  rivers 
were  created ;  when  Brindley  replied,  "  to  feed  naviga- 
ble canals."  This  is  characteristic,  and  probably  authen- 
tic; but  it  was  made  public  by  an  anonymous  corre- 
spondent to  a  journal,  whose  communications  respecting 
Brindley  were  stated  by  some  of  his  friends  to  contain 
many  inaccuracies. 


JOHN  SMEATON:  LIGHT-HOUSES  AND 
HAEBOES. 

OF  John  Smeaton,  the  Civil  Engineer,  it  may  well  be 
said  that  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  "  a  self-created  set 
of  men,  whose  profession  owes  its  origin,  not  to  favor  or 
influence,  but  to  the  best  of  all  protection,  the  encourage- 
ment of  a  great  and  powerful  nation" — in  the  construc- 
tion of  light-houses  and  harbors,  and  the  undertaking  of 
other  great  public  works. 

Smeaton  was  born  in  1724,  at  Austhorpe,  near  Leeds, 
in  a  house  built  by  his  grandfather.  His  father  was  an 
attorney,  and  brought  him  up  with  a  view  to  the  legal 
profession. 

He  exhibited  at  a  very  early  age  great  strength  of  un- 
derstanding and  originality  of  genius.  His  playthings 
were  not  the  toys  of  children,  but  the  tools  with  which  men 
work ;  and  he  appeared  to  take  greater  pleasure  in  see- 
ing the  men  in  the  neighborhood  work,  and  asking  them 
questions,  than  in  any  thing  else.  One  day  he  was  seen, 
to  the  no  small  alarm  of  his  family,  on  the  top  of  his 
father's  barn,  fixing  up  something  resembling  a  wind- 
mill. On  another  occasion,  he  watched  some  men  who 
were  sinking  a  pump  in  a  neighboring  village,  and  ob- 
serving them  cut  off  a  piece  of  bored  pipe,  he  procured 
it,  and  actually  made  with  it  a  pump  that  raised  water. 
All  this  was  done  while  he  was  in  petticoats,  and  before 
he  had  reached  his  sixth  year.  About  his  fourteenth  or 
fifteenth  year  he  had  made  himself  an  engine  to  turn 
rose-work ;  he  also  made  a  lathe,  by  which  he  turned  a 
perpetual  screw  in  brass,  a  machine  but  little  known  at 
that  time.  In  this  manner  he  had,  by  the  strength  of  his 
genius  and  indefatigable  industry,  acquired  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  an  extensive  set  of  tools,  and  the  art  of  working 
at  most  of  the  mechanical  trades  without  the  assistance 
of  a  master. 

In  1742,  in  pursuance  of  his  father's  design,  young 
Smeaton  came  to- London,  and  attended  the  courts  of 


366  THE   EDDYSTONE   LIGHT-HOUSE. 

law  at  Westminster  Hall ;  but,  finding  the  bent  of  his 
mind  averse  to  the  law,  his  father  yielded  to  his  wishes, 
and  allowed  him  to  devote  his  energies  to  more  congen- 
ial pursuits.  About  the  year  1750  he  took  up  the  busi- 
ness of  a  mathematical-instrument  maker ;  next  year  he 
experimented  with  a  machine  that  he  had  invented  for 
measuring  a  ship's  way  at  sea;  and  in  1752  and  1753 
was  engaged  in  a  course  of  experiments  "concerning 
the  natural  powers  of  water  and  wind  to  turn  mills 
and  other  machines  depending  on  circular  motion." 
From  thence  resulted  the  most  valuable  improvements 
in  hydraulic  machinery,  increasing  the  power  one  third. 
For  these  experiments  Smeaton  received  the  Copley  Gold 
Medal  of  the  Royal  Society,  of  which  he  had  become  a 
Fellow.  In  1754  he  visited  Holland  and  the  Nether- 
lands, and  the  acquaintance  he  thus  obtained  with  the 
construction  of  embankments,  artificial  navigations,  and 
similar  works,  probably  formed  an  important  part  of  his 
engineering  education. 

In  1759  Smeaton  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society 
an  experimental  investigation,  by  which  he  reduced  the 
art  of  designing  wind-mills  to  general  principles.  The 
details  may  be  seen  in  Professor  Rankine's  Manual  of 
the  Steam-engine  and  other  Prime  Movers,  1859. 

In  1766  Smeaton  commenced  the  great  work  which, 
more  than  any  other,  may  be  looked  upon  as  a  lasting 
monument  of  his  skill — the  erection  of  the  Eddystone 
Light-house,  built  on  the  Eddystone  rock,  about  fourteen 
miles  south  of  Plymouth.  Two  light-houses  had  before 
been  erected  on  the  rock :  the  first  was  swept  away  by 
a  storm ;  and  the  second,  which  was  built  of  timber,  was 
destroyed  by  fire  in  December,  1755.  The  immediate 
re-erection  of  the  beacon  being  highly  important,  appli- 
cation was  made  to  the  Earl  of  Macclesfield,  then  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Society,  for  advice  as  to  the  person 
who  should  be  intrusted  with  the  difficult  task.  The 
previous  light-houses  had  been  designed  by  non-profes- 
sional men,  and  it  was  felt  now  that  to  erect  another 
"  would  not  so  much  require  a  person  who  had  merely 
been  bred,  or  had  rendered  himself  eminent, -in  this  or 
that  profession,  but  rather  one  who,  from  a  natural 
genius,  had  a  turn  for  contrivances  hi  the  mechanical 


THE    EDDYSTOISTE   LIGHT-HOUSE.  o07 

branches  of  science."  Lord  Macclesfield  immediately 
perceived  that  Smeaton  was  the  man  required,  and  there- 
fore recommended  him.  He  commenced  the  work,  in 
the  spring  of  1756,  by  accurately  measuring  the  very  ir- 
regular surface  of  the  rock,  and  making  a  model  of  it. 
The  cutting  of  the  rock  for  the  foundation  was  com- 
menced on  August  5th  of  the  same  year ;  the  first  stone 
was  landed  on  the  rock  June  20,  1757;  the  building 
was  finished  October  9, 1759,  and  the  lantern  lighted  for 
the  first  time  on  the  16th,  the  whole  being  completed  in 
considerably  less  than  four  years,  the  time  originally  pro- 
posed, during  which  there  were  421  days'  work  done 
upon  the  rock. 

The  Eddystone  Light-house  is  a  circular  tower  of 
stone  sweeping  up  with  a  gentle  curve,  from  the  base, 
and  gradually  diminishing  at  the  top,  somewhat  similar 
to  the  swelling  of  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  the  upper  extrem- 
ity being  surmounted  with  a  lantern  and  gallery.  The 
materials  of  the  tower  are  moorstone,  a  hard  granite, 
and  Portland  stone.  The  granite  rock  was  partially 
worked  to  form  the  foundations ;  and  as  the  rock-joint 
would  be  more  subject  to  the  action  of  the  sea  than  any 
other,  it  was  found  necessary  not  only  that  the  bed  of 
every  stone  should  have  a  level  bearing,  but  that  every 
outside  piece  should  be  grafted  into  the  rock,  so  as  to  be 
guarded  by  a  border  thereof  at  least  three  inches  in 
height  above  it,  which  would  in  reality  be  equivalent  to 
the  founding  of  the  building  in  a  socket  three  inches 
deep  in  the  shallowest  part:  On  Aug.  3,  1756,  Smeaton 
fixed  the  centre  point  of  the  building,  and  traced  out  part 
of  the  plan  on  the  rock ;  and  on  the  6th  nearly  the  whole 
of  the  work  was  set  out.  On  Sept.  4,  two  new  steps  at 
the  bottom  of  the  rock,  and  the  dovetails,  were  roughed 
out,  and  some  of  the  beds  brought  to  a  level  and  finished, 
after  very  great  labor.  The  stones  for  the  several  courses 
were  rough-worked  at  the  quarries  according  to  the  en- 
gineer's draughts. 

A  part  of  the  upper  surface  of  the  rock  having  been 
taken  carefully  off,  but  without  the  use  of  gunpowder, 
lest  it  should  loosen  the  rock,  six  foundation-courses, 
dovetailed  together,  were  raised  on  the  lower  part  of 
the  rock,  which  brought  the  whole  to  a  solid  level  mass. 


368  THE   EDDYSTONE   LIGHT-HOUSE. 

These  courses,  with  eight  others  raised  above  them,  are 
the  solid  bed  of  the  work.  The  courses  of  masonry  are 
skillfully  dovetailed  together,  and  each  layer  of  masonry 
is  very  strongly  cemented,  and  connected  by  oak  trenails 
or  plugs,  the  whole  being  strongly  cramped.  The  gen- 
eral weight  of  the  stones  employed  is  a  ton,  and  some 
few  are  two  tons.  In  the  solid  work  the  centre  stones 
were  fixed  first,  and  all  the  courses  were  fitted  on  a  plat- 
form and  accurately  adjusted  before  they  were  removed 
to  the  rock.  The  base  of  the  tower  is  about  26  feet  9 
inches  in  diameter,  taken  at  the  highest  part  of  the  rock ; 
the  height  of  the  solid  masonry  to  the  top  of  the  stone 
staircase,  from  the  centre  of  the  base,  is  28  feet  4  inches. 
The  whole  height  of  the  tower  and  lantern  is  85  feet  7 
inches,  or  rather  more  than  two  fifths  the  height  of  the 
London  Monument.  The  upper  part  of  the  light-house, 
originally  constructed  of  wood,  was  burnt  in  1770,  and 
renewed  in  1774.  The  Eddy  stone  Light-house  was 
Smeaton's  first  work,  and  also  his  greatest ;  probably, 
the  time  and  all  things  considered,  it  was  the  most  ardu- 
ous undertaking  that  has  fallen  to  any  engineer,  and  none 
was  ever  more  successfully  executed.  And  now,  having 
withstood  the  storms  of  a  hundred  years,  the  Eddystone 
remains,  unmoved  as  the  rock  it  is  built  on,  a  proud 
monument  to  its  great  architect. 

Next  to  the  Eddystone  Light-house,  among  the  many 
useful  works  executed  by  Smeaton,  ranks  Ramsgate  Har- 
bor. To  his  skill  the  preservation  of  the  old  London 
Bridge  for  many  years  was  attributable :  in  1761,  one  of 
the  piers  being  undermined,  the  bridge  was  considered 
to  be  in  such  danger  that  no  one  would  pass  over  it ;  the 
engineers  were  perplexed,  when  an  express  was  sent  to 
Yorkshire  for  Smeaton,  who  immediately  sunk  a  great 
number  of  stones  about  the  endangered  pier,  and  there- 
by preserved  it.  The  great  canal  from  the  Forth  to  the 
Clyde,  the  Spurn  Light-house,  the  Calder  navigation,  and 
some  important  bridges  in  Scotland,  are  also  prominent 
among  Smeaton's  works.  On  the  16th  of  September, 
1792,  while  walking  in  his  garden  at  Austhorpe,  Smeaton 
was  attacked  with  paralysis,  and  on  October  28  he  died. 

Smeaton  left  many  valuable  records  of  his  professional 
career.  In  1 771,  under  his  auspices,  was  established  "  the 


SMEATON'S  INDEPENDENCE.  369 

Smeatonian  Society  of  Civil  Engineers,"  who  subsequent- 
ly published  his  reports  on  public  works.  His  delibera- 
tion and  caution  were  very  great ;  and  so  highly  was  his 
judgment  appreciated,  that  he  was  called  "  the  Standing 
Counsel"  of  his  profession,  and  he  was  constantly  appeal- 
ed to  by  Parliament  on  difficult  engineering  questions. 
He  greatly  improved  the  atmospheric  steam-engine  of 
Newcomen ;  he  introduced  many  improvements  in  math- 
ematical apparatus ;  his  ardent  love  of  astronomy  led 
him  to  build  an  observatory  at  Austhorpe. 

Smeaton  uniformly  evinced  a  high  feeling  of  independ- 
ence in  respect  of  pecuniary  matters,  and  would  never 
allow  motives  of  emolument  to  interfere  with  plans  laid 
on  other  considerations.  The  Empress  Catharine  of 
Russia  was  exceedingly  anxious  to  have  his  services  in 
some  great  engineering  works  in  her  dominions,  and  she 
commissioned  the  Princess  Daschkaw  to  oifer  him  his 
own  terms.  But  his  plans  and  his  heart  were  bent  upon 
the  exercise  of  his  skill  in  his  own  country,  and  he  stead- 
ily refused  all  the  offers  made  to  him.  It  is  reported 
that  when  the  princess  found  her  attempts  unavailing, 
she  said  to  him,  "  Sir,  you  are  a  great  man,  and  I  honor 
you.  You  may  have  an  equal  in  abilities,  perhaps,  but 
in  character  you  stand  alone.  The  English  minister,  Sir 
Robert  Walpole,  was  mistaken;  and  my  sovereign,  to 
her  loss,  finds  in  you  a  man  who  has  no  price." 

After  Smeaton  had  retired  from  his  profession,  he  was 
often  pressed  to  superintend  engineering  works :  when 
these  entreaties  were  backed  by  personal  offers  of  emolu- 
ment, he  used  to  send  for  an  old  woman  who  took  care 
of  his  chambers  in  Gray's  Inn,  and  say,  "  Her  attendance 
suffices  for  all  rny  wants ;"  a  reply  which  intimated  that 
a  man  whose  personal  wants  were  so  simple,  was  not 
likely  to  break  through  a  prearranged  line  of  conduct  for 
mere  pecuniary  consideration. 

Q2 


INVENTIONS  OF  JOSEPH  BRAMAH. 

THIS  ingenious  mechanician  was  born  at  Stainsborough, 
in  Yorkshire,  in  1749,  and  was  intended  for  his  father's 
occupation  of  a  farmer ;  but  he  very  early  evinced  a  taste 
for  mechanical  pursuits,  and  at  the  age  of  sixteen  was 
apprenticed  to  a  joiner.  He  subsequently  removed  to 
London,  where  he  worked  as  a  journeyman  cabinet-maker, 
and  next  set  up  in  the  same  business  for  himself.  His 
adoption  of  the  profession  of  engineer  or  machinist  ap- 
pears to  have  arisen  from  his  contriving  improvements 
in  water-closets.  He  next  invented,  and  patented  in 
1784,  the  celebrated  Bramah  Lock ;  when  he  pronounced 
it  "  not  to  be  within  the  range  of  art  to  produce  a  key, 
or  other  instrument,  by  which  a  lock  on  this  principle 
can  be  opened." 

Bramah  is  an  early  example  of  a  man  of  genius  devis- 
ing and  carrying  out  large  and  extensive  schemes  for  the 
application  of  machinery  to  manufactures.  Thus,  when 
he  obtained  the  patent  for  his  admirable  lock,  he  immedi- 
ately set  about  the  construction  of  a  series  of  machine- 
tools  for  shaping  with  the  required  precision  the  barrels, 
keys,  and  other  parts  of  the  contrivance,  which,  indeed, 
would  have  utterly  failed  unless  they  had  been  formed 
with  the  accuracy  which  machinery  alone  can  give.  In 
Bramah's  workshop  was  educated  the  celebrated  Henry 
Maudslay,  who  worked  with  him  from  1789  to  1796,  and 
was  employed  in  making  the  principal  tools  for  his  lock. 
Its  peculiarity  consisted  in  a  novel  application  of  tum- 
blers, or  movable  obstacles,  and  the  abandonment  of  the 
use  of  wards.  This  lock  was  greatly  improved  by  Bram- 
ah's sons :  its  security  depends  on  the  doctrine  of  com- 
binations, or  the  multiplication  of  numbers  into  each 
other,  which  is  known  to  increase  in  the  most  rapid  pro- 
portion. Bramah's  lock  was,  however,  picked  in  1817, 
when  it  was  improved  by  the  introduction  of  false  notches ; 
it  was  again  picked  in  1851 ;  nevertheless,  it  is  still  one 
of  the  most  inviolable  locks  ever  contrived. 


BRAMAH'S  HYDRAULIC  PRESS.  371 

Among  the  numerous  other  inventions  of  Bramah  were 
improvements  in  water-cocks,  pumps,  and  fire-engines; 
but  his  greatest  work  is  the  Hydraulic  Press,  a  machine 
acting  on  the  principle  of  the  philosophical  toy  called  the 
hydrostatic  paradox,  and  of  very  great  power  in  com- 
pressing bodies  or  lifting  weights,  in  drawing  up  trees 
by  the  roots,  or  piles  from  beds  of  rivers :  woolen  and 
cotton  goods  are  compressed  by  it  into  the  most  portable 
dimensions ;  and  even  hay,  for  military  service,  is  reduced 
to  such  a  state  of  coercion  as  to  be  easily  packed  on  board 
transports. 

Pascal  demonstrated  this  principle  and  its  advantages 
by  fixing  to  the  upper  end  of  a  cask  set  upright  a  very 
long  and  narrow  cylinder.  In  filling  the  barrel,  and  aft- 
erward the  cylinder,  the  simple  addition  of  a  pint  or  two 
of  water,  which  the  latter  was  capable  of  containing,  pro- 
duced the  same  effect  as  if  the  cask,  preserving  its  di- 
ameter throughout,  had  had  its  height  increased  by  the 
whole  length  of  the  cylinder.  Thus  the  increase  of 
weight  of  a  pint  or  two  of  water  was  sufficient  to  burst 
the  bottom  of  the  hogshead  by  the  immense  augmenta- 
tion of  pressure  it  occasioned.  Now,  if  we  suppose  the 
water  removed  from  the  cylinder  of  narrow  dimensions, 
and  replaced  by  a  solid  of  equivalent  weight,  such  as  a 
piston,  it  is  evident  that  the  pressure  must  remain  every 
where  the  same.  Again,  if  we  suppose  the  weight  of  the 
piston  to  be  multiplied  by  the  power  of  a  lever  acting  on 
its  shaft,  the  pressure  will  be  proportionally  augmented, 
so  as  to  produce  on  the  bottom  of  the  cask  a  pressure 
equivalent  to  an  enormous  weight  with  the  exertion  of 
very  little  primitive  force  on  the  piston. 

In  the  Museum  of  the  Commissioners  of  Patents  at 
South  Kensington  is  "the  first  Hydraulic  Press  ever 
made,"  inscribed  "Bramah,  Inv*.  et  Fee1.,  1796." 

Mr.  Bramah  next  patented  the  elegant  and  convenient 
beer-machine  for  drawing  liquors  in  a  tavern-bar  from 
barrels  in  the  cellar  by  means  of  a  force-pump.  He  also 
improved  steam-engine  boilers  and  paper-making  machin- 
ery, and  invented  a  machine  for  making  pens  by  a  mechan- 
ical process,  by  which  several  nibs,  resembling  steel  pens, 
are  cut  out  of  one  quill,  and  fixed  in  a  holder.  In  1806 
he  contrived  a  mode  of  printing,  which,  being  applied  to 


372 

the  numbering  of  bank-notes  during  the  issue  of  one- 
pound  notes  by  the  Bank  of  England,  saved  the  labor  of 
100  clerks  out  of  120.  This  machine  consists  of  disks  or 
wheels,  with  the  numbers  from  1  to  9  and  0  cut  on  the 
periphery  of  each,  the  whole  being  mounted  upon  one 
axle,  but  to  be  turning  independently  of  each  other.  By 
the  action  of  mechanism  which  is  incapable  of  error,  the 
position  of  one  wheel  of  the  series  is  moved  between  each 
operation  of  printing,  so  that  when  the  machine  is  prop- 
erly adjusted,  it  will  print  a  series  of  numbers  in  regular 
progression,  without  the  possibility  of  twice  producing 
the  same  number. 

In  1812  Bramah  patented  a  scheme  for  laying  water- 
mains,  with  force-pumps  to  throw  water  for  extinguish- 
ing fires,  and  to  supply  a  lifting  power  for  raising  great 
weights.  This  ingenious  inventor  died  in  consequence 
of  cold  contracted  while  superintending  the  uprooting 
of  trees  in  Holt  Forest  by  his  Hydraulic  Press,  in  his 
sixty-eighth  year,  in  1814. 


THOMAS  TELFORD  AND  THE  MENAI 
SUSPENSION  BRIDGE. 

IN  the  life  of  this  eminent  engineer  "  another  striking 
instance  is  added  to  those  on  record  of  men  who  have, 
by  the  force  of  natural  talent,  unaided  save  by  upright- 
ness and  persevering  industry,  raised  themselves  from 
the  low  estate  in  which  they  were  born  to  take  their 
stand  among  the  master  spirits  of  the  age."*  Telford's 
father  was  a  shepherd  in  the  pastoral  district  of  Esk- 
daile,  in  Dumfriesshire,  where,  in  the  parish  of  Water- 
wick,  Thomas,  his  only  son,  was  born  in  1757.  He  re- 
ceived the  rudiments  of  education  at  the  parish  school ; 
and  while  engaged  during  the  summer  season  as  a  shep- 
herd-boy in  assisting  his  uncle,  he  diligently  made  use  of 
his  leisure  in  studying  the  books  lent  to  him  by  his  vil- 
lage friends.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  apprenticed 
to  a  stone-mason  at  Langholm :  he  was  for  several  years 
employed  chiefly  in  his  native  district ;  and  in  the  con- 
struction of  plain  bridges  and  farm-buildings,  small  vil- 
lage churches  and  manses,  he  passed  a  valuable  training, 
such  as  is  of  singular  advantage  to  the  future  architect 
or  engineer.  In  1780,  being  then  about  twenty-three,  he 
visited  Edinburgh  for  employment,  and  there,  for  about 
two  years,  he  paid  much  attention  both  to  architecture 
and  drawing.  He  then  removed  to  London,  and  there 
worked  upon  the  quadrangle  of  Somerset  House,  under 
Sir  William  Chambers,  the  architect.  Telford  was  next 
engaged  in  Portsmouth  Dock-yard  upon  various  build- 
ings for  about  three  years,  during  which  he  became 
well  acquainted  with  the  construction  of  graving-docks, 
wharf- walls,  and  similar  engineering  works.  In  1787  he 
removed  to  Shrewsbury :  subsequently,  in  Shropshire,  he 
built  a  stone  bridge  over  the  Severn ;  and,  next,  the  iron 
bridge  at  Buildwas,  consisting  of  a  very  flat  arch,  130 
feet  span ;  these  being  followed  by  forty  other  bridges 
in  the  same  county. 

*   Transactions  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers. 


374  VARIOUS   WORKS    OF   TELFORD. 

The  Ellesmere  Canal,  about  103  miles  in  length,  was 
Telford's  first  great  work,  and  led  him  to  direct  his  at- 
tention almost  solely  to  civil  engineering.  This  canal 
crosses  the  Dee  at  an  elevation  of  70  feet,  by  an  aqueduct 
bridge  of  10  arches,  each  40  feet  span,  the  bed  of  the 
canal  being  of  cast-iron  plates  instead  of  puddled  clay 
and  masonry.  The  Pont-y-Cysylte  aqueduct  bridge  is 
still  more  remarkable,  and  consists  simply  of  a  trough  of 
cast-iron  plates  flanged  together,  and  supported  on  ma- 
sonry piers  120  feet  above  low  water.  The  Caledonian 
Canal  is  another  of  Telford's  principal  works,  commenced 
in  1802  and  opened  in  1822.  Its  entire  length  (between 
the  German  and  Atlantic  Oceans)  is  250  miles,  of  which 
230  miles,  friths  and  lakes,  were  already  navigable ;  the 
canal  itself  is  about  20  miles,  and  cost  a  million  pounds 
sterling.  We  have  not  space  to  describe  the  other  ca- 
nals which  Telford  wholly  or  partially  constructed.  He 
executed  many  important  drainage  works,  especially  of 
Bedford  Level.  On  the  Continent  he  superintended  the 
construction  of  the  Gotha  Canal  in  Sweden,  for  which  he 
received  a  Swedish  order  of  knighthood. 

The  works  executed  by  Telford  under  the  Commis- 
sioners of  Highland  Roads  and  Bridges  are  of  the  great- 
est importance;  they  intersect  the  whole  of  Scotland 
with  1000  miles  of  new  road,  and  1200  bridges,  in  a 
mountainous  and  stormy  region ;  Telford  also  improved 
several  harbors,  and  erected  many  Highland  churches 
and  manses. 

Telford's  most  important  harbor-work  is  the  St.  Kath- 
erine's  Docks,  London,  which  were  constructed  with  un- 
exampled rapidity.  He  also  built  many  bridges  of  con- 
siderable size  and  improved  construction ;  but  the  most 
perfect  specimen  of  his  skill  as  an  engineer  is  the  great 
road  from  London  to  Holyhead,  and  the  works  connect- 
ed with  it.  The  Menai  Suspension  Bridge  is  a  noble  ex- 
ample of  his  boldness  in  designing,  and  practical  skill  in 
executing,  a  work  of  novel  and  difficult  character.  It 
crosses  the  Menai  Strait,  where  it  connects  Caernarvon- 
shire with  the  Isle  of  Anglesea.  The  opposite  shores 
being  bold  and  rocky,  allowed  the  roadway  of  the  bridge 
to  be  100  feet  above  high-water  mark.  The  main  chains, 
16  in  number,  are  supported  on  two  stone  pyramids 


THE    MENAI    SUSPENSION   BRIDGE.  375 

above  the  roadway,  the  ends  of  the  chains  being  secured 
in  a  mass  of  masonry  built  over  stone  arches  between 
each  of  the  pyramids,  or  piers,  and  the  adjoining  shores. 
The  first  stone  was  laid  by  W.  A.  Provis,  resident  engi- 
neer, August  15,  1819.  In  1824  the  works  were  so  far 
advanced  that  the  only  remaining  difficulty  was,  "  How 
are  the  main  chains  to  be  put  up  ?"  for  no  precise  details 
had  up  to  that  time  been  determined  upon ;  which  was 
so  far  an  advantage,  that  the  engineer  had  the  benefit  of 
full  consideration  and  experience,  and  many  mistakes 
were  obviated  that  must  have  happened  had  the  details 
been  "all  settled  beforehand.  In  the  beginning  of  May 
the  cast-iron  segments  and  saddles  were  carried  up  to 
the  pyramids,  but  it  was  not  till  April  26,  1825,  that  the 
first  chain  was  carried  across.  It  was  scarcely  fixed, 
when  one  of  the  men  got  astride  it,  and  then  walked 
over  30  or  40  yards  of  the  middle  of  the  chain,  only  nine 
inches  wide,  its  height  being  125  feet  above  the  water! 
After  the  second  chain  had  been  put  up,  it  was  found 
necessary  to  replace  some  of  the  bars  which  had  been 
damaged ;  and  owing  to  this,  it  was  practically  ascer- 
tained that  if  one  or  more  links  of  a  chain  should  at  any 
time  be  injured  they  could  be  taken  out  and  replaced. 

During  the  progress  of  the  work  every  piece  of  iron 
was  carefully  tested ;  and,  to  prevent  any  injury  of  the 
metal  by  oxydation,  each  piece,  after  its  strength  had 
been  proved,  was  cleaned,  heated,  and,  while  hot,  im- 
mersed in  linseed  oil ;  after  remaining  in  the  oil  a  few 
minutes,  that  the  pores  might  be  filled,  the  bar  was  taken 
out,  and  returned  to  the  heating  stove,  in  which  the  oil 
was  dried  by  a  moderate  heat :  the  oil  was  thus  convert- 
ed into  a  thin  coat  of  hard  varnish,  affording  a  complete 
protection  from  the  atmosphere. 

The  massive  iron  castings  which  are  imbedded  in  the 
rock  to  form  an  abutment  for  the  chains  are  placed  upon 
layers  of  coarse  flannel  saturated  with  white-lead  and 
oil,  which,  with  a  few  timber  wedges,  enables  them  to 
bear  steadily  against  the  rock.  On  the  tops  of  the  sus- 
pension towers  are  massive  cast-iron  saddles  to  receive 
the  chains;  and  between  these  and  the  cast-iron  beds 
which  sustain  them  are  inserted  rollers,  which  allow  the 
saddles  to  move  under  their  immense  load  when  the 


376  THE   MENAI   SUSPENSION   BRIDGE. 

chains  expand  or  contract.  The  operation  of  raising  the 
portions  of  the  chains  between  the  suspension  towers  oc- 
casioned much  anxiety,  but  was  accomplished  without 
great  difficulty  by  joining  several  bars  from  the  top  of 
each  tower  by  a  hanging  scaffold,  and  elevating  the  in- 
tervening portion  of  each  chain  from  a  raft  400  feet  long 
and  6  feet  wide  by  means  of  a  capstan ;  and  to  check 
the  vibration  occasioned  by  high  winds,  the  chains  are 
tied  together  by  transverse  braces.  The  several  chains 
being  thus  suspended,  the  roadway  of  oak  planking,  with 
felt  and  tar  beneath,  was  bolted  to  the  underneath;* 
and  on  Jan.  30, 1826,  the  mails  drove  over  it  for  the  first 
time.  In  February  following  repeated  gales  did  much 
damage  to  the  iron-work. 

The  main  dimensions  of  the  bridge  are :  extreme  length  of  chains, 
about  1715  feet ;  height  of  roadway  from  water-line,  100  feet ;  height 
of  each  suspending  pier  from  road,  53  feet ;  length  from  pier  to  pier, 
553  feet ;  width  of  two  carriage-ways  and  footpath  in  centre,  16  feet. 
The  16  chains  consist  each  of  5  bars  10  feet  long ;  width,  3  feet  by  1 
inch,  with  6  connecting  links  at  each  joint,  which  weighs  about  50 
Ibs.;  bars  in  cross-section  of  chain,  80.  Total  weight  of  the  iron- 
work, 1,373,281  Ibs.  The  chains  will  bear  without  any  risk  1245'5 
tons,  more  than  the  strain  produced  by  the  weight  of  the  bridge  itself; 
or  732  £  tons  besides  its  own  weight. 

The  thread-like  appearance  of  the  suspending  rods, 
easily  shaken  by  the  wind  or  by  the  hand,  the  vast  size 
and  lightness  of  the  whole,  give  the  idea  of  a  fairy's 
power  having  stretched  a  series  of  chains  from  the  woods 
on  the  one  side  to  the  barren  rocks  on  the  other ;  and  its 
fairy  lightness  is  heightened  by  contrast  with  the  gigan- 
tic massiveness  of  the  Britannia  Bridge  at  about  a  mile 
distant. 

Telford  left  his  autobiography,  with  an  elaborate  ac- 
count of  his  labors  of  more  than  half  a  century,  and 
other  valuable  contributions  to  engineering  literature. 
He  taught  himself  Latin,  French,  Italian,  and  German. 
He  died  in  1834,  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven,  and  was 
buried  near  the  middle  of  the  nave  of  Westminster  Abbey. 
He  was  the  first  president  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  En- 
gineers, to  whom  he  bequeathed  his  scientific  books, 

*  It  is  related  that,  just  previous  to  the  fixing  of  the  last  bar,  Mr. 
Telford  withdrew  to  his  private  office  at  the  works,  and  there  knelt  in 
fervent  prayer  to  the  Giver  of  all  good  for  the  successful  completion 
of  this  great  work. 


STATUE    OF    TELFOKD.  377 

prints,  drawings,  etc.,  and  £2000  to  provide  annual  pre- 
miums to  be  given  by  the  Council.  In  their  house  is  a 
fine  portrait  of  Telford. 

As  we  reflect  upon  the  noble  works  which  Telford  left 
for  posterity,  we  feel  that  the  Eskdaile  shepherd-boy  has 
duly  earned  every  honor  he  has  received. 

His  services  have  been  appreciated  by  the  public,  but 
by  the  public  alone.  He  received  the  honor  of  knight- 
hood from  the  King  of  Sweden,  but  no  mark  of  distinc- 
tion from  the  King  of  England — no  memorial  from  a 
country  whose  scientific  eminence  he  illustrated,  and 
whose  commercial  power  he  enlarged.  By  subscription 
of  a  few  of  his  friends  and  admirers,  however,  a  marble 
statue  of  the  great  engineer  has  been  placed  in  the  Islip 
Chapel  at  Westminster  Abbey.  It  is  from  the  chisel  of 
Baily,  R.A.,  who  received  for  it  but  £1000,  a  third  of  the 
sum  usually  charged  for  such  a  work.  The  Dean  de- 
manded £300  for  permission  to  place  the  statue  in  the 
Abbey,  but  subsequently  lowered  it  to  £200,  which  de- 
mand was  acquiesced  in.  But  Telford's  "  various  works 
are  conspicuous  ornaments  to  the  country,  and  speak  for 
themselves  as  the  most  durable  monument  of  a  well- 
earned  fame.  In  number,  magnitude,  and  usefulness, 
they  are  too  intimately  connected  with  the  prosperity  of 
the  British  people  to  be  overlooked  or  forgotten  in  future 
times,  and  the  name  of  Telford  must  remain  permanent- 
ly associated  with  that  remarkable  progress  of  public 
improvement  which  has  distinguished  the  age  in  which 
he  lived."* 

*  Council  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers.  Two  or  three  days 
before  Mr.  Telford's  death,  he  caused  to  be  completed,  tinder  his  di- 
rection, the  corrected  MS.  of  the  detailed  account  of  the  principal  un- 
dei-takings  which  he  had  planned  or  lived  to  see  executed.  This  work, 
edited  by  Mr.  John  Rickman,  one  of  Mr.  Telford's  executors,  was 
published  in  1838. 


JOHN  RENNTE:  DOCKS  AND  BEIDGES. 

FEW  of  the  great  masters  in  this  mechanical  age  have 
executed  such  stately  works  for  posterity  as  John  Ren- 
nie,  the  designer  of  three  of  the  noblest  bridges  in  the 
world,  in  addition  to  numerous  other  monuments  of  en- 
gineering skill. 

John  Rennie  was  the  son  of  a  respectable  Scottish 
farmer,  and  was  born  on  June  7,  1761,  at  Phantassie,  in 
the  county  of  East  Lothian.  He  was  the  youngest  of 
nine  children,  and  received  the  first  rudiments  of  educa- 
tion at  the  school  of  his  native  parish  ;  and  to  a  trifling 
circumstance  connected  with  his  daily  journeys  thither 
his  friends  ascribe  his  acquisition  of  a  taste  for  mechanics, 
which  fixed  the  course  of  the  future  man.  The  school 
was  situated  on  the  opposite  side  of  a  brook,  the  usual 
mode  of  crossing  which  was  by  stepping-stones ;  but 
when  the  freshes  were  out,  it  was  necessary  to  employ  a 
boat,  which  was  kept  at  the  workshop  of  Mr.  Andrew 
Meikle,  a  millwright,  well  known  in  Scotland  for  his  im- 
provements in  the  threshing 'machine.  This  led  him  to 
Mr.  Meikle's  workshop,  where  he  learned  his  first  lessons 
in  mechanics ;  and,  ere  he  had  completed  his  eleventh 
year,  he  had  constructed  a  wind-mill,  a  pile-engine,  and  a 
steam-engine.  He  subsequently  received  instruction  in 
elementary  mathematics  at  Dunbar,  where,  on  the  pro- 
motion of  the  master,  he  for  a  short  time  conducted  the 
school.  He  did  not  pursue  his  studies  far  in  pure  mathe- 
matics, but  applied  himself  chiefly  to  elementary  mechan- 
ics, drawing  machinery,  and  architecture.  He  also  at- 
tended the  courses  of  lectures  on  mechanical  philosophy 
and  chemistry  which  were  given  at  Edinburgh  by  Drs. 
Robison  and  Black.  Prepared  thus  with  what  books 
and  professors  could  teach,  he  entered  the  practical  world. 
Meanwhile,  he  had  been  employed  by  Mr.  Meikle  as  a 
workman,  under  whose  superintendence  he  assisted  in 
the  erection  of  some  mills  in  the  neighborhood;  and  he 


379 

is  said  to  have  rebuilt  on  his  own  account  a  mill  near 
Dundee.  It  is  probable  that  soon  after  this  work  was 
finished,  or  about  1780,  Rennie  left  Scotland  for  Lon- 
don, on  his  way  visiting  the  great  manufacturing  towns 
in  the  north  of  England,  and  inspecting  their  principal 
works. 

Soon  after  he  was  established  in  the  metropolis  Mr. 
Rennie  was  employed  in  the  construction  of  two  steam- 
engines,  and  the  machinery  connected  with  them,  at  the 
Albion  Flour  Mills,  Blackfriars  Bridge.  These  engines 
were  of  the  kind  called  double,  which  Mr.  Watt  had  just 
then  patented ;  each  of  them  was  of  fifty-horse  power, 
and  the  two  could  turn  twenty  mill-stones.  All  the 
wheel-work  was  made  of  cast-iron  instead  of  wood,  which 
had  before  been  used  in  such  machinery.  Mr.  Rennie's 
skill  was  strikingly  manifested  in  the  methods  which  he 
adopted  to  render  the  movements  steady^  and  by  this 
great  work  he  at  once  established  his  character  as  a  ma- 
chinist. 

Mr.  Rennie  continued  to  the  last  to  be  employed  in 
the  construction  of  steam-engines,  or  of  the  different 
kinds  of  machinery  to  which,  as  a  first  mover,  steam  is 
applied;  and  in  its  execution  he  may  be  said  to  have 
been  the  first  who  made  that  skillful  distribution  of  the 
pressures,  and  gave  those  just  proportions  to  the  several 
parts,  which  have  rendered  the  work  of  Englishmen  su- 
perior to  that  of  any  other  people.  He  was  likewise  ex- 
tensively engaged  in  designing  or  superintending  various 
important  public  works.  Between  1799  and  1803  he  con- 
structed the  stone  bridge  at  Kelso,  below  the  junction  of 
the  Tweed  and  Teviot.  This  handsome  structure  consists 
of  five  elliptical  arches,  carrying  a  level  roadway ;  and 
over  each  pier  are  two  small  columns  which  support  the 
entablature.  Mr.  Rennie  also  built  stone  bridges  at  Mus- 
selburgh  and  other  places  in  Scotland ;  but  his  master- 
piece of  this  class  is  the  Waterloo  Bridge  over  the  Thames, 
which  has  no  parallel  in  Europe.  This  bridge  was  begun 
in  1811,  and  finished  in  six  years:  it  is  built  of  granite, 
"in  a  style  of  solidity  and  magnificence  hitherto  un- 
known. There  elliptical  arches,  with  inverted  arches  be- 
tween them,  to  counteract  the  lateral  pressure,  were  car- 
ried to  a  greater  extent  than  in  former  bridges;  and 


380  RENNIE'S  BRIDGES. 

isolated  coffer-dams  upon  a  great  scale,  in  a  tidal  river, 
with  steam-engines  for  pumping  out  the  water,  were,  it  is 
believed,  for  the  first  time  employed  in  this  country ;  and 
the  level  roadway,  which  adds  so  much  to  the  beauty  as 
well  as  the  convenience  of  the  structure,  was  there  adopt- 
ed." Canova  dignified  this  as  "  the  noblest  bridge  in  the 
world,"  adding  that  "  it  alone  was  worth  coming  from 
Rome  to  London  to  see." 

Baron  Dupin,  in  classic  eulogy,  styled  it  "  a  colossal 
monument  worthy  of  Sesostris  and  the  Caesars."  Wells, 
in  his  History  of  the  Bedford  Level,  observes  of  this 
bridge,  "  that  a  fabric  of  this  immensity,  presenting  a 
straight  horizontal  line  stretching  over  nine  large  arches, 
should  not  have  altered  more  than  a  few  inches  (not  five 
in  any  one  part)  from  that  straight  line,  is  an  instance 
of  strength  and  firmness  elsewhere  unknown,  and  al- 
most incredible."  The  bridge  itself  cost  about  £400,000, 
which,  by  the  approaches,  was  increased  to  a  million  of 
money. 

Rennie,  besides  the  elegant  iron  bridge  over  the  Wit- 
ham  in  Lincolnshire,  designed  and  constructed  the  South- 
wark  Bridge  over  the  Thames.  It  consists  of  three  cast- 
iron  arches,  the  centre  240 -feet  span,  and  the  two  side 
arches  210  feet  each;  the  ribs  forming  a  series  of  hollow 
masses,  or  voussoirs,  similar  to  those  of  stone ;  a  principle 
new  in  the  construction  of  cast-iron  bridges,  and  very  suc- 
cessful. The  segmental  pieces  and  braces  are  kept  to- 
gether by  dovetailed  sockets  and  long  cast-iron  wedges, 
so  that  bolts  are  unnecessary. 

Rennie's  chief  work  connected  with  inland  navigation 
is  the  Kennet  and  Avon  Canal,  fifty-seven  miles  in  length, 
and  requiring  all  the  skill  of  the  engineer  to  conduct  it 
through  a  very  rugged  country.  He  also  gave  a  plan 
for  draining  the  fens  at  Witham,  which  was  executed  in 
1812. 

The  London  Docks,  and  the  East  and  West  India 
Docks  at  Blackwall,  were  executed  from  Rennie's  plans. 
He  likewise  formed  the  new  Docks  at  Hull  (where  also 
he  constructed  the  first  dredging-machine  used  in  this 
country) ;  also  the  Prince's  Dock  at  Liverpool,  and  those 
of  Dublin,  Greenock,  and  Leith,  the  latter  with  a  stupen- 
dous sea-wall.  Mr.  Rcnnie  also  built  the  pier  at  Holy- 


BENNIE'S  BRIDGES.  381 

head.  To  these  works  must  be  added  the  insular  pier, 
or  Breakwater,  nearly  a,  mile  in  extent,  protecting  Plym- 
outh Sound  from  the  tremendous  force  of  the  full  roll 
of  the  Atlantic  in  southerly  or  southwestern  gales.  It 
is  constructed  on  true  hydrodynamical  principles,  and  in 
its  formation  3^  million  tons  of  stone  have  been  deposited. 

Rennie's  last  work  was  his  design  for  the  present  Lon- 
don Bridge,  unrivaled  in  the  world  "  in  the  perfection  of 
proportions  and  the  true  greatness  of  simplicity."  He 
died  in  1821 ;  but  the  charge  of  its  construction  was 
confided  to  his  son,  now  Sir  John  Rennie,  who,  in  1831, 
finished  the  magnificent  work. 

The  principal  undertakings  in  which  Rennie  was  en- 
gaged are  estimated  from  his  reports  to  have  cost  forty 
millions  sterling.  His  works  were  costly;  but  it  has 
been  well  said  that  "  they  were  made  for  posterity ;  they 
were  never  of  slight  construction,  nor  would  he  ever  en- 
gage in  any  undertaking  were  a  sufficiency  of  funds  was 
not  forthcoming  to  meet  his  views."  His  industry  was 
untiring:  he  was  rarely  occupied  in  business  less  than 
twelve  hours  a  day.  Like  Jesse  Ramsden,  he  was  strik- 
ingly clear  in  communicating  information  to  others ;  yet 
rarely  had  either  of  them  recourse  for  illustration  to  any 
other  instrument  than  a  two-foot  rule,  which  each  always 
carried  in  his  pocket.  Rennie  owed  his  good  fortune  to 
no  lucky  accident  or  successful  artifice,  but  to  talent,  in- 
dustry, prudence,  perseverance,  boldness  of  conception, 
soundness  of  judgment,  and  habits  of  untiring  application. 
His  remains  rest  in  the  crypt  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  be- 
side the  grave  of  Robert  Mylne,  the  architect  of  Black- 
friars  Bridge. 


"THE  FIEST  PEACTICAL  STEAM-BOAT." 

THE  story  of  the  Steam-boat  is  one  pf  the  most  inter- 
esting chapters  in  the  records  of  human  invention.  The 
accounts  of  vessels  propelled  by  machinery  lead  us 
•through  a  retrospect  of  many  centuries  and  the  oldest 
countries.  The  paddle-wheel  is  stated  to  have  been  used 
by  the  ancient  Egyptians,  but  not  upon  admissible  au- 
thority. The  wheel  of  a  chariot  in  an  Egyptian  painting 
has  often  been  mistaken  for  a  paddle-wheel ;  a  precisely 
similar  mistake  has  been  made  in  describing  one  of  the 
sculptured  slabs  from  Nineveh ;  and  Sir  H.  Rawlinson 
and  Mr.  Layard  assured  Mr.  Macgregor  that  in  their 
Assyrian  researches  they  have  not  discovered  any  indi- 
cation of  the  use  of  machinery  in  propelling  vessels. 

We  find  some  indistinct  records  of  vessels  propelled 
by  wheels.  An  old  work  on  China  contains  a  sketch  of 
a  vessel  moved  by  four  paddle-wheels,  perhaps  in  the 
seventh  century ;  but  the  earliest  distinct  notice  of  this 
means  of  propulsion  appears  to  be  by  Robertus  Valterius, 
A.D.  1472,  who  gives  several  wood-cuts  representing  pad- 
dle-wheels. The  account  of  Blasco  de  Garay's  experi- 
ment in  1543  is  now  generally  discredited  (see  page 
275) ;  but  boats  propelled  by  paddle-wheels  are  mention- 
ed by  many  early  writers,  such  as  Julius  Scaliger  in  1558 ; 
Bourne  in  1578;  and  Roger  Bacon  in  1597.  Among 
the  earliest  projectors  we  find  David  Ramsey,  one  of  the 
pages  to  King  James  I.,  who,  with  another,  in  1618,  ob- 
tained a  patent  for  "  divers  newe  apt  formes  or  kinds  of 
engines  for  ploughing  without  horse  or  oxen ;  as  also  to 
raise  water,"  and  "  to  make  boats  for  carriages  runnin 
upon  the  water  as  swift  in  calmes,  and  more  safe  in 
storms,  than  boats  full  sayled  in  great  windes ;"  and  in 
1630,  "  to  raise  water  from  lowe  pits  by  fire"  (the  steam- 
engine)  ;  "  to  make  boats,  ships,  and  barges  to  goe 
against  the  wind  and  tyde."  Passing  over  a  few  similar 
inventions,  we  come  to  the  Marquis  of  Worcester's  patent 
(in  1661)  of  the  application  of  a  current  to  turn  paddle- 


PAPIN. — PKIXCE  EGBERT.  383 

wheels  on  a  vessel,  which  was  propelled  by  winding  up 
a  rope.  Edward  Bushnell,  in  1678,  described  a  mode  of 
rowing  ships  by  connecting  the  oars  on  both  sides  with 
the  heaving  of  a  capstan. 

In  1681,  Papin,  the  improver-  of  steam-engines  for 
pumping,  proposed  to  the  Royal  Society  "  a  new-invented 
boat,  to  be  rowed  by  oars  moved  with  heat,"  which  was 
recommended  by  Leibnitz.  It  is  clear  also  that  Papin 
conceived  steam  might  be  employed  to  propel  ships  by 
paddles;  for,  as  early  as  1690,  in  a  paper  published  in 
the  Acta  Eruditorum^  Papin  says:  "Without  doubt, 
oars  fixed  to  an  axis  could  be  most  conveniently  made 
to  revolve  by  our  tubes.  It  would  only  be  necessary  to 
furnish  the  piston-rod  with  teeth,  which  might  act  on  a 
toothed  wheel,  properly  fitted  to  it,  and  which,  being  fit- 
ted on  the  axis  to  which  the  oars  are  attached,  would 
communicate  a  rotary  motion  to  it."  During  Papin's 
residence  in  England,  he  witnessed  an  interesting  experi- 
ment made  on  the  Thames,  in  which  a  boat,  constructed 
from  a  design  of  the  Prince  Palatine  Robert,  was  fitted 
with  revolving  oars,  or  paddles,  attached  to  the  two  ends 
of  a  long  axle,  going  across  the  boat,  and  which  received 
their  motion  from  a  trundle,  working  a  wheel  turned  by 
horses.  The  velocity  with  which  this  horse-boat  was 
propelled  was  so  great  that  it  left  the  king's  barge, 
manned  with  sixteen  rowers,  far  astern  in  the  race  of  trial. 

In  1682,  a  horse  tow-vessel  was  used  at  Chatham:  it 
had  a  wheel  on  each  side,  connected  by  an  axle  across 
the  boat,  the  paddles  being  made  to  revolve  by  horses 
moving  a  wheel  turned  by  a  trundle  fixed  on  the  axle. 
In  1692,  Anthony  Duvivian  patented  "a  very  easy  and 
not  costly  machine  for  making  a  ship  go  against  wind 
and  tide."  In  1696,  Thomas  Savery  patented  his  inven- 
tion for  moving  a  paddle-wheel  on  each  side  of  the  ship 
by  men  turning  round  the  capstan.  By  some  writers  it 
is  stated  that  Savery  proposed  to  drive  a  paddle-wheeled 
vessel  by  his  steam-engine,  already  described  at  page  279 ; 
whereas  he  merely  believed  that  it  might  be  very  useful 
to  ships,  but  dare  not  meddle  with  that  matter.  "  It  ap- 
pears," says  Mr.  Bennet  Woodcroft,  "  to  be  a  proof  of 
Savery's  sound  mechanical  views  that  he  knew  his  en- 
gine, although  doubtless  the  most  effective  of  its  kind  at 


384  DICKENS. — HULLS. — GENEVOIS. 

that  period,  to  be  incapable  of  propelling  a  boat  advan- 
tageously." 

In  1724  John  Dickens  patented  his  contrivance  by 
floats  for  moving  ships ;  and  in  1729,  Dr.  John  Allen  his 
engines  for  navigating  ships  in  a  calm,  by  forcing  water 
through  the  stern  of  the  ship,  at  a  convenient  distance 
under  the  surface  of  the  water,  as  well  as  by  firing  gun- 
powder in  vacuo,  and  applying  its  whole  force  to  move 
the  engines. 

In  1736  Jonathan  Hulls  patented  his  machine.  He 
placed  a  paddle-wheel  on  beams  projecting  over  the 
stern,  and  it  was  turned  by  an  atmospheric  engine  act- 
ing, in  conjunction  with  a  counterpoise  weight,  upon  a 
system  of  ropes  and  grooved  wheels.  His  mode  of  ob- 
taining a  rotary  motion  was  new  and  ingenious,  and 
would  enable  a  steam-boat  to  be  moved  through  water ; 
but  it  was  not  practically  useful.  The  cranks,  as  de- 
scribed by  Hulls,  receive  rotary  motion  from  the  axis  on 
which  they  are  placed,  and  do  not,  as  often  stated,  im- 
part that  motion  to  it;  had  he  discovered  this  applica- 
tion of  the  crank,  "  there  can  be  little  doubt,"  says  Mr. 
Woodcroft,  "that  the  steam-engine  would  then  have 
been  applied  not  only  to  propel  boats,  but  to  various 
other  useful  purposes." 

A  prize  being  offered  by  the  Academy  of  Sciences  for 
the  best  essay  on  the  manner  of  impelling  vessels  with- 
out wind,  it  was  obtained  in  1752  by  Daniel  Bernouilli, 
who  proposed  inclined  planes  moved  circularly  like  the 
sails  of  a  wind-mill,  two  at  each  side  of  the  vessel,  and 
two  more  behind,  to  be  moved  by  men  aboard,  by  steam- 
engines,  or  on  rivers  by  horses  placed  to  the  barges.  In 
1760,  J.  H.  Genevois,  a  clergyman  of  Berne,  published  his 
"  Great  Principle,"  to  concentrate  power  by  a  series  of 
springs  to  work  oars  for  propelling  vessels.  He  also  pro- 
posed an  atmospheric  steam-engine  to  bend  the  springs, 
and  the  expansive  force  of  gunpowder  for  the  same  pur- 
pose. He  states  that,  since  his  arrival  in  England,  he 
had  learned  that  thirty  years  before  a  Scotchman  had 
proposed  to  make  a  ship  sail  with  gunpowder,  but  that 
thirty  barrels  of  gunpowder  had  scarce  forwarded  the 
ship  ten  miles. 

On  January  5,  1769,  JAMES  WATT  patented  his  im 


WATT'S  STEAM-BOAT  ENGINES.  385 

provements  on  the  steam-engine,  one  of  which,  namely, 
the  "  fourth,"  was  for  causing  the  steam  to  act  above  the 
piston  as  well  as  below  it.  This  was  the  first  step  by 
which  the  steam-engine  was  successfully  used  to  propel 
a  vessel ;  and  this  great  "  improvement,"  says  Mr.  Wood- 
croft,  "  was  applied  to  the  first  practically-propelled  steam- 
boat, and  is  still  used  in  the  present  system  of  steam  nav- 
igation." 

In  1774,  the  Comte  d'Auxiron  and  M.  Perrier  are 
stated  to  have  used  a  paddle-wheel  steam-boat  on  the 
Seine,  but  with  poor  success.  Desblanes,  in  1782,  sent 
the  model  to  the  Conservatoire  (still  there)  of  a  vessel 
in  which  an  endless  chain  of  floats  is  turned  by  a  hori- 
zontal steam-engine. 

In  1779,  Matthew  Wasborough,  an  engineer  of  Bristol, 
added  to  Watt's  improvement  of  the  double-acting  cylin- 
der-engine by  converting  a  rectilinear  into  a  continuous 
circular  motion ;  but  it  did  not  act  well,  and  was  super- 
seded by  the  invention  of  James  Pickard  in  1780,  which 
is  no  other  than  the  present  connecting-rod  and  crank, 
and  a  fly-wheel,  being  the  second  and  last  great  improve- 
ment in  the  steam-engine,  which  enabled  it  to  be  of  serv- 
ice in  propelling  vessels. 

In  the  following  year,  1781,  James  Watt  patented  his 
"  sun  and  planet  motion,"  or  method  of  applying  the  vi- 
brating or  reciprocating  motion  of  steam-engines  to  pro- 
cure a  continued  rotative  or  circular  motion  round  an 
axis  or  centre.  In  the  same  year  the  Marquis  de  Jouf- 
froy  constructed  a  steam-boat  at  Lyons,  140  feet  in 
length,  with  which  he  is  said  to  have  experimented  suc- 
cessfully on  the  Seine ;  but  Mr.  Macgregor  states  that 
no  description  of  the  machinery  of  this  vessel  is  given 
before  that  published  in  1816  by  the  Marquis  de  Jouf- 
froy,  who  gives  a  sketch  of  the  steam-boat,  a  copy  of 
which  is  in  our  Great-Seal  Patent-Office  Library. 

In  1785  Joseph  Bramah  patented  a  mode  of  propelling 
vessels  by  an  improved  rotary  engine,  by  means  either 
of  a  paddle-wheel,  or  what  may  be  called  a  "  Screw  Pro- 
peller," or  a  wheel  with  inclined  fans  or  wings,  like  the 
fly  of  a  smoke-jack,  or  the  vertical  sails  of  a  wind-mill, 
fixed  on  or  beyond  the  stern,  about  where  the  rudder 
is  usually  placed ;  "  its  movement  being  occasioned  by 

R 


386  SYMINGTON'S  FIRST  EXPERIMENT. 

means  of  a  horizontal  spindle  or  axletree,  conveyed  to 
the  engine  through  or  above  the  stern-end  of  the  ship." 
"  This,"  says  Mr.  Woodcroft,  "  was,  without  doubt,  the 
best  mode  of  steam-propelling  that  had  been  then  sug- 
gested ;  for  here  the  steam  would  so  act  as  directly  to 
produce  a  circular  motion  on  the  propeller-shaft.  There 
is,  however,  no  account  of  Bramah  having  tried  this 
mode." 

On  June  5,  1785,  William  Symington,  an  engineer  of 
Wanlock-head  lead-mines,  patented  a  mode  of  obtaining 
rotary  motion  from  a  steam-engine  by  chains,  ratchet 
wheels,  and  catches ;  but  it  was  inferior  to  the  crank  of 
Pickard,  or  the  sun  and  planet  wheel  of  Watt.  Experi- 
ments conducted  about  the  same  time  at  Dalswinton,  in 
Scotland,  resulted,  in  1787,  in  the  successful  use  of  a 
steam-engine  by  Miller,  Taylor  (tutor  to  Miller's  sons), 
and  Symington,  to  propel  a  vessel  by  paddle-wheels, 
which  worked  one  before  the  other  in  the  centre  of  the 
boat. 

The  first  experiment  was  performed  on  the  lake  at  Dalswinton  in 
October,  1788,  when  the  engine,  mounted  in  a  frame,  was  placed  upon 
the  deck  of  a  double  pleasure-boat.  "  We  then  proceeded"  (says  Tay- 
lor) "to  action ;  and  a  more  complete,  successful,  and  beautiful  experi- 
ment was  never  made  by  any  man,  at  any  time,  either  in  art  or  sci- 
ence. The  vessel  moved  delightfully,  and,  notwithstanding  the  small- 
ness  of  the  cylinders  (4  inches  dia.),  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour. 
After  amusing  themselves  a  few  days,  the  engine  was  removed,  and 
carried  into  the  house,  where  it  remained  as  a  piece  of  ornamental 
furniture  for  a  number  of  years." 

The  boat  was  twenty-five  feet  long  and  seven  broad,  and  was  pro- 
pelled by  two  paddle-wheels,  placed  one  forward  and  the  other  aft  of 
the  engine,  in  the  space  between  the  two  hulls  of  the  double  boat. 
The  engine,  now  become  a  curiosity,  was  most  laboriously  sought  for 
by  Mr.  Bennet  Woodcroft. 

On  the  death  of  Mr.  Miller  in  181 5,  the  engine  came  into  the  pos- 
session of  his  eldest  son,  Mr.  Patrick  Miller;  and  in  1828  it  was  sent 
by  him,  packed  in  a  large  deal  case,  to  Messrs.  Coutts  and  Co.,  bank- 
ers, 59  Strand,  London.  In  this  establishment  the  engine  was  kept 
until  February  17,  1837,  on  which  day  it  was  removed  to  the  store 
warehouse  of  Messrs.  Tilbury  and  Co.,  49  High  Street,  Marylebone. 
Here  it  remained  till  the  31st  of  January,  1846,  and  then  it  was  for- 
warded to  Mr.  Kenneth  Mackenzie,  of  63  Queen  Street,  Edinburgh. 
Beyond  this  it  could  not  be  traced  for  a  period  of  several  years. 

Mr.  Bennet  Woodcroft  did  not,  however,  relax  in  his  search,  and  at 
length  ascertained  that  the  engine  was  sold  by  Mr.  Mackenzie's  direc- 
tion to  Mr.  Kirkwood,  a  plumber  of  Edinburgh,  who  removed  it  from 


SYMINGTON'S  STEAM-BOAT  ENGINE.  387 

the  framing,  and  threw  it  into  a  corner  for  the  purpose  of  melting : 
this  intention,  however,  was  not  carried  into  effect,  doubtless  owing 
to  the  death  of  Mr.  Kirkwood.  It  was  subsequently  found  in  the 
possession  of  Messrs.  William  Kirkwood  and  Sons,  from  whom  it  was 
purchased,  and  dispatched  to  the  Great-Seal  Patent  Office  on  the  19th 
of  April,  1853.  Subsequently  it  was  transmitted  to  Messrs.  Penn, 
engineers,  of  Greenwich,  who  gratuitously  reinstated  it  in  a  frame, 
and  put  it  again  in  working  order,  as  an  object  of  great  public  inter- 
est. The  engine  was  returned  to  Mr.  Woodcroft  as  good  as  new, 
January  4th,  1855,  and  on  the  29th  of  January,  1857,  it  was  removed 
from  the  Great-Seal  Patent  Office  to  the  Patent  Museum  at  South 
Kensington. 

Symington's  engine  comprises  several  features  of  remarkable  inter- 
est to  engineers.  The  upper  part  of  each  cylinder  is  enlarged,  so  as 
to  prevent  the  overflow  of  the  water  used  for  keeping  the  piston  steam- 
tight,  upon  the  plan  used  by  Newcomen.  The  lower  part  of  each 
cylinder  is  Watt's  condenser  and  air-pump,  not  separated  from  the 
cylinder,  as  patented  by  Watt,  but  attached  to  it.  The  valves  are 
opened  and  closed  by  an  improved  arrangement  of  Beighton. 

For  Mr.  Taylor's  efforts  to  introduce  Steam  Naviga- 
tion, his  widow  received  a  pension  from  government  of 
£50  per  annum,  granted  by  the  then  Lord  Liverpool ; 
and  in  1837,  each  of  his  four  daughters  received  a  gift  of 
£50  through  Lord  Melbourne.  This  is,  however,  but  a 
miserable  reward  for  the  valuable  services  rendered. 
Mr.  Miller  sought  no  pecuniary  reward,  and  fortunately 
he  needed  none :  he  had  built  eight  vessels  to  improve 
naval  architecture,  but  was  refused  a  license  to  make  ex- 
periments with  one,  it  not  being  according  to  statute ! 

We  have  been  led  by  the  above  curious  story  of  the 
search  for  Symington's  steam-engine  somewhat  out  of 
the  order  of  time.  To  return:  in  1787,  Mr.  Miller  de- 
scribed to  the  Royal  Society  experiments  made  by  him 
in  the  Frith  of  Forth,  in  a  double  vessel  60  feet  long,  put 
in  motion  by  his  water-wheel,  wrought  by  a  capstan 
with  five  bars  and  a  toothed  wheel  working  in  a  trundle 
fixed  on  the  axis  of  the  water-wheel.  The  steam-boat 
was  three-masted,  and  made  sundry  tacks  in  the  Frith, 
with  four  men,  at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour.* 

*  In  1787  Mr.  Miller  published  a  pamphlet  (now  scarce)  on  the 
subject  of  propelling  boats  by  paddle-wheels  turned  by  men,  with 
drawings  by  Alexander  Nasmyth,  In  1825  Mr.  Miller's  son  also 
published  a  pamphlet,  in  which  he  claims  for  his  father  the  invention 
of  Steam  Navigation,  and  states  that  he  (the  father)  had  expended  in 
experiments  the  sum  of  nearly  £30,000.  The  pamphlet  of  Mr.  Miller, 
sen.,  is  reprinted  in  Mr.  Woodcroft's  work  on  Steam  Navigation. 


388        THE  "CHARLOTTE  DUNDAS' 

Meanwhile  the  subject  was  hotly  pursued  in  the  United 
States,  where,  in  1788,  John  Fitch  and  James  Ramsey 
patented  improvements  in  a  steam -boat  which  went 
eighty  miles  in  one  day,  worked  by  paddles  perpendicu- 
larly. Fitch,  however,  was  subsequently  reduced  to 
poverty  by  his  project,  and  terminated  his  life  by  plung- 
ing into  the  Alleghany.  Ramsey,  being  refused  a  patent 
in  America,  came  to  England,  and  here  patented  several 
improvements  ;  but,  just  as  he  had  completed  his  steam- 
boat, he  died ;  it  was,  however,  floated  in  the  Thames  in 
1793,  against  wind  and  tide,  at  four  knots  an  hour.  It 
appears  that  these  two  inventors  had  long  conceived  the 
project  of  propelling  vessels  by  steam-power  before  they 
experimented;  for,  in  1784,  Ramsey  mentioned  to  Gen- 
eral Washington  the  project  of  Steam  Navigation,  and 
Fitch  showed  the  general  a  model  of  his  proposed  boat. 

In  the  year  1801,  Thomas  Lord  Dundas,  of  Kerse,  who 
was  acquainted  with  Mr.  Miller's  labors,  and  who  was 
an  extensive  owner  of  property  in  the  Forth  and  Clyde 
Canal,  employed  Mr.  Symington  to  make  experiments  on 
steam-boats,  to  be  substituted  for  the  horses  then  em- 
ployed to  draw  the  vessels  on  the  canal.  These  experi- 
ments in  two  years  cost  £7000 ;  and  the  result  was  the 
production  of  the  first  practical  Steam-boat,  named  the 
Charlotte  Dundas,  in  honor  of  his  lordship's  daughter, 
the  lamented  Lady  Milton.  "This  vessel,"  says  Mr. 
Woodcroft,  "  might,  from  the  simplicity  of  its  machinery, 
have  been  at  work  to  this  day,  with  such  ordinary  repairs 
as  are  now  occasionally  required  to  all  steam-boats."  In 
the  steamer  there  was  an  engine  with  the  steam  acting 
on  each  side  of  the  piston  (Watt's  patented  invention), 
working  a  connecting-rod  and  crank  (Pickard's  patent), 
and  the  union  of  the  crank  to  the  axis  of  Miller's  im- 
proved paddle-wheel  (Symington's  patent).  Thus  had 
Symington  the  undoubted  merit  of  having  combined  to- 
gether for  the  first  time  those  improvements  which  con- 
stitute the  present  system  of  Steam  Navigation. 

Although  the  experiments  with  this  boat  were  highly 
successful,  the  proprietors  of  the  Forth  and  Clyde  Canal 
declined  to  adopt  it,  from  an  opinion  that  the  waves  it 
created  would  damage  the  banks.  Lord  Dundas,  how- 
ever, entertained  a  more  favorable  opinion  on  the  subject, 


THE  "CIIAKLOTTE   DUNDAs"  STEAM-BOAT.  389 

and  recommended  to  the  Duke  of  Bridgewater  the  adop- 
tion of  Symington's  steam-boat.  His  grace  at  first 
doubted  the  utility  of  the  invention ;  but,  after  having 
seen  a  model,  and  received  explanations  from  Mr.  Sy- 
mington, he  gave  him  an  order  to  build  eight  boats  sim- 
ilar to  the  Charlotte  Dundas,  to  ply  on  his  canal.  Sy- 
mington returned  to  Scotland  in  high  hope,  but  was 
doomed  to  disappointment ;  for,  on  the  same  day  that 
the  committee  on  the  Forth  and  Clyde  Canal  refused  to 
allow  his  boats  to  be  employed,  he  received  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Bridgewater. 

Unable  longer  to  struggle  against  his  misfortunes,  and 
his  resources  being  exhausted,  Symington  laid  up  his 
boat  in  a  creek  of  the  canal,  where  it  remained  a  number 
of  years  exposed  to  public  view.  He  next  abandoned 
his  own  old  engine,  and  obtained  a  patent  for  applying  a 
Double-action  Reciprocating  Engine  to  a  boat,  and  for 
placing  his  crank  upon  the  axis  of  the  paddle-wheel, 
which  was  a  very  important  discovery  and  improvement. 
From  the  establishment  of  this  combination  of  machinery 
to  a  boat,  no  improvement  on  his  system  has  been  effect- 
ed either  in  this  or  any  other  country. 

In  the  following  year,  1789,  Miller  and  his  fellow-ex- 
perimenters constructed  an  engine  of  about  twelve-horse 
power  (or  twelve  times  the  power  of  the  first)  at  the 
Carron  Works.  This  was  mounted  in  the  large  double 
boat  which  had  formerly  run  against  the  Custom-house 
boat  at  Leith.  Except  in  size,  this  machine  resembled 
the  former  model.  This  boat  was  tried  on  the  Forth 
and  Clyde  Canal,  performed  very  successfully,  and  at- 
tained a  speed  of  nearly  seven  miles  an  hour ;  but  the 
hull  being  much  too  slight  for  permanent  use  as  a  steam- 
boat, or  for  taking  out  to  sea,  it  was,  soon  after  the  trial, 
dismantled. 

Satisfactory  as  was  the  result  of  these  experiments, 
they  did  not  immediately  lead  to  the  introduction  of 
Steam  Navigation,  and  several  unsuccessful  schemes 
were  tried  in  this  country  and  North  America  before 
this  was  effected.  One  of  these,  Ramsey's  on  the  Thames, 
has  been  already  mentioned.  About  this  time  Dr.  Cart- 
wright  contrived  a  steam-barge,  and  explained  it  to  Ful- 
ton, as  some  say,  in  1793,  when  he  was  studying  painting 


390 

under  West ;  but  others  date  it  a  few  years  later,  when 
he  was  introduced  to  Dr.  Cartwright  during  his  journey 
to  Paris  in  1796.  However  this  might  be,  it  is  evident 
that  Fulton's  attention  was  directed  to  the  subject  about 
this  time.  Golden,  his  biographer,  states  that  he  made 
drawings  of  an  apparatus  for  Steam  Navigation  in  1793; 
he  submitted  them  to  Lord  Stanhope,  who,  in  1795,  made 
experiments  in  a  steam-boat  propelled  by  duck-feet  pad- 
dles, with  which,  however,  he  could  not  obtain  a  greater 
speed  than  three  miles  an  hour. 

About  the  year  1825  Mr.  Symington  memorialized  the 
Lords  of  the  Treasury,  in  consequence  of  which  the  sum 
of  £100  was  awarded  from  his  majesty's  privy  purse; 
and  a  year  or  two  afterward,  a  farther  sum  of  £50.  He 
had  cherished  the  hope  that  an  annual  allowance  might 
be  procured,  but  in  this  he  was  disappointed.  He  re- 
ceived a  small  sum  from  the  London  steam-boat  proprie- 
tors, through  the  influence  of  Mr.  James  Walker ;  and  in 
the  decline  of  life,  several  kind  relatives  and  friends  con- 
tributed to  Symington's  support:  among  the  number 
was  Lord  Dundas.  Such  was  the  fate  of  the  inventor  of 
"  the  first  practical  steam-boat." 

Although  Symington's  experiments  did  not  lead  to 
the  immediate  adoption  of  steam-vessels  for  commercial 
purposes,  they  probably  tended  in  no  unimportant  degree 
to  their  subsequent  profitable  establishment  in  America 
and  Great  Britain,  for  among  the  numerous  individuals 
who  inspected  Symington's  vessel  with  interest  were 
Fulton  and  Bell.  After  Fitch  and  Ramsey,  Chancellor 
Livingston  attempted  to  build  a  steamer  on  the  Hudson, 
and  in  1797  he  applied  to  the  Legislature  of  New  York 
for  exclusive  privileges  to  navigate  boats  by  a  steam-en- 
gine. Though  his  project  excited  much  ridicule,  the 
privilege  was  granted,  on  condition  that  he  should  with- 
in twelve  months  produce  a  steam-vessel  which  should 
attain  a  mean  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour.  This  he  failed 
to  accomplish,  though  assisted  by  an  Englishman  named 
Nesbit,  and  by  Brunei  (afterward  Sir  Mark  Isambard) ; 
consequently  his  grant  or  patent  became  void.  Shortly 
afterward,  being  at  Paris,*  as  minister  from  the  United 

*  While  at  Paris,  Fulton  submitted  to  Napoleon  I.  his  plan  of 
Steam  Navigation,  when,  it  was  long  said,  Napoleon  coldly  received 


NAPOLEON  I.  AND  FULTON.  391 

States,  Livingston  conversed  with  Fulton  on  the  subject 
of  steam-boats,  and  they  subsequently  conjointly  complet- 
ed a  boat  of  considerable  size. 

Meanwhile,  in  1804,  John  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  near 
New  York,  tried  a  small  boat  22  feet  long,  which  attain- 
ed, for  short  distances,  seven  or  eight  miles  an  hour. 

Mr.  Sime,  M.A.,  has  thus  vividly  narrated  Fulton's  im- 
portant share  in  the  success  of  Steam  Navigation : 

It  was  reserved  for  an  American  citizen  to  execute,  and  an  Ameri- 
can river  to  witness,  an  enterprise  the  honor  of  which  properly  be- 
longs to  Scotland.  Robert  Fulton  visited  Europe  toward  the  close  of 
the  last  century,  and  made  several  attempts,  both  in  Britain  and 
France,  to  propel  vessels  by  steam.  Watt  and  Boulton  supplied  him 
with  machinery ;  and  many  of  his  ideas  were  borrowed  from  Miller 
of  Dalswinton,  and  Symington,  whose  steam-boat  he  inspected  when 
in  Scotland.*  From  the  first  Fulton  regarded  the  steamer  as  a 
means  of  developing  the  vast  resources  of  the  Western  States  of  the 
Union,  where  50,000  miles  of  river  navigation,  through  a  rich  and 
fertile  country,  invited  capital,  enterprise,  and  population.  Fourteen 
years  elapsed  before  success  crowned  his  labors ;  many  difficulties  and 
disappointments  were  encountered ;  and  once,  when  a  vessel  which  he 
had  built  was  ready  for  an  experimental  trip  on  the  Seine  at  Paris, 
the  boat  broke  in  two,  and  the  machinery  carried  the  fragments  to  the 

the  projector.  Marshal  Marmont,  in  his  Memoirs,  says  that  Bona- 
parte, who,  from  his  education  in  the  artillery, .  had  a  natural  preju- 
dice against  novelties,  treated  Fulton  as  a  quack,  and  would  not  listen 
to  him.  M.  Louis  Figuier  also  writes  that  Bonaparte  refused  to  place 
the  matter  in  the  hands  of  the  Academy.  The  following  letter  from 
Napoleon,  dated  from  the  Camp  at  Boulogne,  21st  of  July,  1804,  and 
addressed  to  M.  de  Champagny,  Minister  of  the  Interior,  proves  the 
contrary : 

"I  have  just  read  the  project  of  Citizen  Fulton,  an  engineer,  which 
you  sent  me  much  too  late,  for  it  seems  capable  of  changing  the  face 
of  the  world.  At  all  events,  I  desire  that  you  will  immediately  place 
the  examination  of  it  in  the  hands  of  a  committee,  composed  of  mem- 
bers of  the  Institute,  for  it  is  to  them  that  the  scientific  men  of  Europe 
will  naturally  look  for  a  decision  on  the  question.  A  great  physical 
truth  stands  revealed  before  my  eyes.  It  will  be  for  these  gentlemen 
to  see  it,  and  endeavor  to  avail  themselves  of  it.  As  soon  as  the 
report  is  made,  it  will  be  sent  to  you,  and  you  will  forward  it  to  me. 
Let  the  decision  be  given  in  a  week,  if  possible,  for  I  am  impatient  to 
hear  it.  NAPOLEON. 

"Camp  of  Boulogne,  2lst  July,  1804." 

*  Before  he  returned  to  America  Fulton  visited  England,  and  there 
induced  Symington  to  afford  him  much  information,  and  even  to  per- 
form a  voyage  on  his  account,  during  which  Fulton  noted  in  a  memo- 
randum-book the  particulars  of  the  construction  and  effect  of  the  ma- 
chine, which  Symington  unhesitatingly  afforded  him. 


392  FULTON  AND   STEAM   NAVIGATION. 

bottom  of  the  river.*  In  1807  he  launched  his  first  steam-vessel  on 
the  Hudson,  and  inaugurated  a  new  era  in  river  and  ocean  naviga- 
tion. The  prejudices  which  rendered  the  multitude  both  of  the  wise 
and  the  ignorant  skeptical  before  Fulton's  ideas  had  been  fully  real- 
ized, and  which  drew  them  to  the  water-side  to  scoff  at  an  expected 
failure,  were  destroyed  in  a  few  minutes  by  the  steady  motion  of  the 
vessel.  Her  first  trip  was  made  on  the  Hudson,  between  New  York 
and  Albany,  a  distance  of  150  miles.  When  we  look  back  on  that 
voyage,  fraught  with  unspeakable  benefits  to  mankind,  how  amusing 
is  almost  every  thing  connected  with  it !  The  velocity  of  the  steamer 
was  only  about  five  miles  an  hour ;  yet  so  rapid  did  this  rate  seem  to 
those  on  board,  that  the  ships  they  passed,  moving  with  themselves, 
appeared  as  if  at  anchor.  The  pine-wood  used  as  fuel  sent  forth  a 
column  of  ignited  vapor  many  feet  above  the  flue ;  and  so  appalled 
were  the  crews  of  the  ships  on  the  Hudson  as  they  saw  this  fiery  mon- 
ster moving  toward  them  in  the  darkness  against  both  wind  and  tide, 
that  some  abandoned  their  ships,  and  others  thought  their  last  hour 
was  come.  Between  1807  and  1812,  the  year  in  which  the  Comet,  the 
first  British  steamer,  began  to  ply  on  the  Clyde,  steam-boats  were  in- 
troduced on  almost  all  the  larger  rivers  of  the  United  States. — Edin- 
burgh Essay  s,  1856. 

During  the  war  between  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  in 
1814,  Fulton  proposed  to  defend  the  harbor  of  New  York  from  attack 
by  means  of  steam-frigates.  That  which  he  actually  built,  although 
it  was  not  required,  was  pierced  for  thirty  guns,  and  resembled  the 
double-boats,  or  twins,  constructed  by  Miller  of  Dalswinton.  She  was 
also  fitted  with  machinery  calculated  to  discharge  an  immense  quan- 
tity of  hot  water  through  the  port-holes  of  an  enemy's  ship,  by  which 
the  ammunition  would  be  rendered  useless,  and  the  crew  scalded  to 
death.  Cutlasses  without  number  were  said  to  be  moved  by  machin- 
ery; pikes,  darted  forth  and  withdrawn  every  quarter  of  a  minute, 
would  sweep  the  decks  of  our  men-of-war ;  in  short,  the  iron  fingers 
of  a  modern  Scylla  would  kill  the  sailors  at  their  post.  Little  did 
either  nation  imagine  that,  before  the  lapse  of  forty  years,  Great  Brit- 
ain would  depend  on  this  very  application  of  steam  to  maintain  that 
supremacy  at  sea  of  which  many  supposed  it  had  deprived  her. 

Fulton  also  formed  two  projects  for  submarine  navi- 
gation :  one,  a  carcass  or  box  filled  with  combustibles, 
which  was  to  be  propelled  under  water,  and  made  to  ex- 
plode beneath  the  bottom  of  a  vessel ;  the  other,  a  sub- 
marine boat,  to  be  used  for  a  similar  destructive  purpose ; 
but  for  practical  use  both  were  failures.  He  appears, 
however,  to  have  clung  to  the  scheme  with  great  perse- 

*  To  this  discouraging  accident  Mr.  Scott  Russell  attributes  one  of 
the  excellences  of  the  American  steam-boats — the  strong  and  light 
framing,  by  which,  though  slender,  they  are  enabled  to  bear  the 
weight  and  strain  of  their  large  and  powerful  engines.  To  remedy 
the  evil,  Fulton  almost  reconstructed  his  vessel,  when  her  shattered 
hull  was  raised. 


BELL'S  "  COMET"  STEAMER.  393 

verance,  and  not  long  before  his  death  exhibited  its  pow- 
er by  blowing  up  an  old  vessel  in  the  neighborhood  of 
New  York.  Fulton's  chest,  which  he  named  a  Torpedo, 
or  Nautilus,  was,  in  his  own  words,  "  to  blow  a  whole 
ship's  company  into  the  air  ;"  it  was  nothing  more  than 
a  chest  containing  gunpowder,  which,  by  means  of  clock 
machinery,  might  be  ignited  at  a  given  time  under  wa- 
ter, and,  being  placed  under  a  ship's  bottom,  destroy  her 
by  the  explosion.  This  application  of  gunpowder  had 
before  been  made  by  Bushnell :  it  has  been  humorously 
described  as  "  something  like  the  scheme  of  children  to 
catch  swallows  by  applying  salt  to  their  tails."  Fulton 
offered  his  invention  to  Bonaparte  when  First  Consul, 
and  he  was  sent  to  Brest  under  the  promise  of  destroying 
the  English  blockading  squadron ;  but  he  did  nothing. 
He  then  offered  his  scheme  to  the  British  ministry,  and, 
by  way  of  experiment,  blew  to  pieces  in  two  days  an  old 
Danish  brig  in  Walmer  Roads  ;  but  his  grand  invention 
was  the  Catamaran  expedition,  as  the  trial  of  his  ma- 
chines against  the  Boulogne  flotilla  was  called. 

Fulton  died  in  1815  ;  and  so  highly  were  his  services 
appreciated  in  the  United  States,  that,  besides  other  test- 
imonials of  respect,  the  members  of  both  houses  of  the 
Legislature  wore  mourning  on  the  occasion  of  his  death. 

The  practical  application  of  Steam  Navigation  in  Scot- 
land did  not  take  place  until  a  few  years  after  Fulton's 
success  in  America,  when  Henry  Bell,  of  Helensburg,  on 
the  Clyde,  a  house-carpenter,  had  built  the  Comet,  40  feet 
keel,  25  tons  burden,  and  three-horse  power :  her  boiler 
is  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Scott  Russell.  Mr.  Bennet 
Woodcroft,  in  comparing  these  boats  with  their  prede- 
cessors, emphatically  says :  Symington's  boat,  the  Char- 
lotte Dundas,  was  altogether  superior  in  its  mechanical 
arrangements  to  either  Fulton's  Clermont  or  Bell's  Com- 
et, as  may  be  readily  seen  by  inspection  of  the  drawings. 
Next  year,  1813,  appeared  the  second  steamer  on  the 
Clyde — the  Elizabeth;  and  in  1814  was  built  the  In- 
dustry, by  Mr.  Fyfe,  of  Fairlie :  she  is  of  wood,  and  her 
first  engine  was  put  on  board  by  Duncan  M'Arthur,  of 
Glasgow.  This  vessel  is  now  a  luggage-steamer  of  the 
Clyde  Shipping  Company,  and  is  stated  to  be  the  oldest 
steamer  afloat. 

R2 


394  EARLY    STEAM    VOYAGES. 

In  Ireland,  a  person  named  Dawson  states  that  he  had 
built  a  steam-boat  of  50  tons  burden,  worked  by  a  high- 
pressure  steam-engine,  as  early  as  1811,  which  he  also 
named  the  Comet,  after  the  great  phenomenon  of  that 
year.  In  1813  Dawson  established  a  steam-boat  on  the 
Thames,  to  ply  between  Gravesend  and  London,  "  which 
was  the  first  that  did  so  for  public  accommodation ;  al- 
though Mr.  Lawrence,  of  Bristol,  who  introduced  a  steam- 
boat on  the  Severn,  soon  after  the  successful  operations 
on  the  Clyde,  had  her  carried  to  London  (through  the 
canals)  to  ply  on  the  Thames ;  but,  from  the  opposition 
of  the  watermen  to  the  innovation,  he  was  in  the  end 
obliged  to  take  her  to  her  first  station."  Mr.  Cruden, 
in  his  History  of  Gravesend,  however,  states  the  first 
Gravesend  steam-boat  to  have  been  the  Margery,  built 
upon  the  Clyde  in  1813  by  the  builders  of  the  Comet: 
she  started  for  Gravesend  in  1815.  In  the  previous  year, 
1814,  a  steamer  began  to  ply  between  London  and  Rich- 
mond. 

George  Dodd,  whose  history  is  a  melancholy  instance 
of  the  poverty  which  often  attends  the  most  ingenious  in- 
ventors, was,  it  appears,  the  first  to  undertake  a  consider- 
able voyage  by  sea  in  a  steam-vessel,  built  on  the  Clyde 
in  1813.  She  was  74  or  75  tons  burden  ;  14  or  16  horse- 
power, with  paddle-wheels  9  feet  in  diameter.  Dodd 
brought  her  round  to  the  Thames,  by  steam  and  sails, 
through  rough  weather,  especially  in  the  Irish  Sea. 

The  first  ocean  steam-voyage  of  great  length  was  made 
by  the  Savannah,  of  350  tons,  which  arrived  at  Liver- 
pool July  15,  1819,  having  made  the  voyage  from  New 
York  in  26  days.  She  then  went  to  St.  Petersburg, 
touching  at  Copenhagen,  and  subsequently  recrossed  the 
Atlantic.  Steam  was,  however,  employed  only  during  a 
part  of  these  voyages. 

The  first  steam  voyage  to  India  was  made  in  the  En- 
terprise, which  sailed  from  Falmouth  Aug.  16,  1825 :  for 
this  feat  the  captain  of  the  vessel  received  £10,000. 

In  1838,  the  Sirius,  of  London,  and  the  Great  Western 
effected  their  first  voyage  to  New  York,  almost  simul- 
taneously, from  Bristol;  and  from  the  same  port  the 
Great  Britain,  propelled  by  a  screw,  made  her  first  voy- 
age out  in  July,  1845,  thus  establishing  the  usefulness  of 


EAKLY    STEAM   VOYAGES.  395 

each  mode  of  propulsion  for  the  navigation  of  the  ocean. 
Captain  Ericsson  appears  to  have  accomplished  for  the 
screw  propeller  in  America  and  England  what  Fulton 
did  for  the  paddle-wheel  in  the  former,  and  Bell  in  the 
latter  country,  namely,  its  practical  introduction.  To 
Francis  Pettit  Smith,  the  patentee  of  the  Archimedean 
Screw  Propeller,  for  the  bringing  into  general  use  this 
system  of  propulsion,  a  magnificent  plate  testimonial  and 
subscriptions,  in  the  whole  amounting  to  £2678,  were 
presented  at  a  festival  in  the  summer  of  1858,  Mr.  Rob- 
ert Stephenson,  M.P.,  presiding.  The  screw  is  specially 
adapted  for  war-steamers :  it  leaves  a  clear  broadside  for 
the  guns,  does  not  prevent  the  use  of  sails,  and  allows 
the  machinery  to  be  placed  six  or  eight  feet  below  the 
water-line,  thus  leaving  the  upper  decks  free  for  wording 
the  guns.  The  screw  was  first  tried  in  the  Archimedes  ; 
and  in  1839  the  first  war-ship,  the  Rattler,  was  fitted 
with  it. 

The  substitution  of  iron  for  wood  in  the  building  of 
steam-vessels  insures  their  superior  lightness  and  buoy- 
ancy, and  has  led  to  water-tight  compartments  and  a 
multitude  of  other  important  changes. 


SIR  ISAMBAED  M.  BRUNEL:  BLOCK  MA- 
CHINERY AND  THE  THAMES  TUNNEL. 

THE  name  of  Brunei  has  now  for  two  generations, 
from  the  commencement  of  this  century  to  the  present 
time,  been  identified  with  the  progress  and  the  applica- 
tion of  mechanical  and  engineering  science. 

The  elder  Brunei,  ISAMBAED  MARK,  who  displayed 
such  diversity  of  genius  for  the  minute  and  the  vast,  was 
born  near  Rouen  in  1769,  and  from  his  earliest  boyhood 
showed  mechanical  tastes.  When  sent  to  the  seminary 
of  St.  Nicaise  at  Rouen,  he  preferred  the  study  of  the 
exact  sciences,  mathematics,  mechanics,  and  navigation, 
to  the  classics,  and  loved  to  pass  his  holidays  in  a  joiner's 
shop.  At  the  age  of  twelve  years  he  was  proficient  in 
turning,  and  in  the  construction  of  models  of  ships,  ma- 
chines, and  musical  instruments ;  he  also  made  an  octant, 
guided  by  the  one  belonging  to  his  tutor  and  by  a  treat- 
ise on  navigation ;  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  he  took  such 
interest  in  astronomy  as  to  observe  the  stars,  greatly  to 
the  astonishment  of  the  villagers.  In  1786  he  enlisted 
as  a  sailor,  from  which  date  up  to  1793  he  made  several 
voyages  to  the  West  Indies,  in  which  he  used  instru- 
ments of  his  own  construction :  he  also  made  a  piano-forte 
while  the  ship  once  lay  at  Guadaloupe. 

Brunei's  first  engineering  work  was  a  survey  for  the 
canal  which  now  connects  Lake  Champlain  with  the  River 
Hudson  at  Albany.  He  afterward  acted  as  an  architect, 
and  built  one  of  the  theatres  at  New  York.  He  was 
employed  on  the  forts  erected  for  the  defense  of  that 
city,  and  in  the  establishment  of  an  arsenal  and  foundery ; 
he  also  devised  ingenious  contrivances  for  boring  cannon 
and  moving  large  masses  of  metal  with  facility.  He 
next  visited  England,  where  his  first  work  was  an  auto- 
graphic machine  for  copying  maps,  drawings,  and  written 
documents. 

Brunei's  next  work  was  his  invention  and  construction 
of  the  assemblage  of  machines  in  Portsmouth  Dock-yard 


BKTJNEL'S  BLOCK  MACHINERY.  397 

for  the  formation  of  Blocks  employed  in  raising  burdens, 
and  particularly  in  the  important  service  of  moving  the 
rigging  of  ships.  There  are  sixteen  different  machines, 
all  driven  by  the  same  steam-engine :  seven  cut  or  shape 
logs  of  elm  or  ash  into  the  shells  of  blocks,  while  nine 
fashion  stems  of  Hgnum-vitaB  into  pulleys  or  sheaves,  and 
form  the  iron  pin,  which  being  inserted,  the  block  is  com- 
plete. Four  njen  with  this  machine  turn  out  as  many 
blocks  as  fourscore  did  formerly,  and  at  less  cost ;  and 
the  supply  has  never  failed,  even  though  1500  blocks  are 
required  in  the  rigging  of  a  ship  of  the  line.  By  adjust- 
ments, blocks  can  be  manufactured  of  one  hundred  dif- 
ferent sizes :  thirty  men  can  make  one  hundred  per  hour ; 
and  the  machinery,  by  Maudslay,  in  twenty-five  years  re- 
quired no  repairs.  It  cost  £46,000  ;  and  the  saving  per 
annum,  in  time  of  war,  has  been  £25,000.  A  second  set 
of  machinery  was  executed  for  the  dock-yard  at  Chatham. 
This  assemblage  of  machines  contains  so  many  ingenious 
processes  for  gaining  the  proposed  ends  with  the  utmost 
accuracy,  and,  at  the  same  time,  with  the  least  possible 
labor,  as  to  justify  the  opinion  that  it  constitutes  one  of 
the  noblest  triumphs  of  mechanical  skill.  There  is  a  set 
of  magnificent  models  of  this  invention  in  the  possession 
of  the  Navy  Board :  the  machines  work  in  succession,  so 
as  to  begin  and  finish  off  a  two-sheaved  block,  four  inches 
in  length,  in  the  most  perfect  manner.  A  detailed  ac- 
count of  the  entire  machinery  is  given  in  the  Penny  Cy- 
clopcedia.  Supplement  1 . 

Mr.  Brunei  next  built  in  Chatham  Dock-yard  the  Steam 
Saw-mill,  in  which  he  introduced  Circular  Saws,  subse- 
quently improved  for  cutting  veneers.  He  also  invented 
a  machine  for  making  seamless  shoes ;  for  nail-making ; 
for  twisting,  measuring,  and  forming  sewing-cotton  into 
hanks ;  for  ruling  paper ;  a  contrivance  for  cutting  and 
shuffling  cards  without  the  aid  of  fingers,  produced  in  re- 
ply to  a  playful  request  of  Lady  Spencer ;  a  hydraulic 
packing-press  \  new  methods  and  combinations  for  sus- 
pension bridges ;  and  a  process  for  building  wide  and 
flat  arches  without  centrings.  He  was  employed  in  the 
construction  of  the  first  Ramsgate  steamer ;  he  was  the 
first  to  suggest  the  advantage  of  steam-tugs  to  the  Ad- 
miralty ;  and  for  ten  years  he  carried  on  experiments  in 


398  THE   THAMES   TUNNEL. 

constructing  a  machine  for  using  carbonic  acid  gas  as  a 
motive  power. 

A  popular  writer  of  forty  years  since  has  left  this  graphic  picture 
of  his  visit  to  Brunei's  workshops  at  Battersea:  "In  a  small  building 
on  the  left,  I  was  attracted  by  the  solemn  action  of  a  steam-engine  of 
sixteen-horse  or  eighty-men  power,  and  was  ushered  into  a  room 
where  it  turned,  by  means  of  bands,  four  wheels  fringed  with  fine 
saws,  two  of  eighteen  feet  in  diameter,  and  two  of  nine  feet.  These 
circular  saws  were  used  for  the  purpose  of  separating  veneers,  and  a 
more  perfect  operation  was  never  performed.  I  beheld  planks  of  ma- 
hogany and  rosewood  sawed  into  veneers  the  sixteenth  of  an  inch 
thick,  with  a  precision  and  grandeur  of  action  which  really  was  sub- 
lime. The  same  power  at  once  turned  these  tremendous  saws  and 
drew  their  work  from  them.  A  large  sheet  of  veneer,  nine  or  ten  feet 
long  by  two  feet  broad,  was  thus  separated  in  about  ten  minutes,  so 
even  and  so  uniform  that  it  appeared  more  like  a  perfect  work  of  Na- 
ture than  one  of  human  art.  The  force  of  those  sa\vs  may  be  con- 
ceived, when  it  is  known  that  the  large  ones  revolve  sixty-five  times 
in  a  minute  ;  hence  18  X  3'14 =56'5  X  65  gives  3672  feet,  or  two  thirds 
of  a  mile,  in  a  minute ;  whereas,  if  a  sawyer's  tool  gives  thirty  strokes 
of  three  feet  in  a  minute,  it  is  but  ninety  feet,  or  only  the  fortieth  part 
of  the  steady  force  of  Mr.  Brunei's  saws. 

"  In  another  btiilding  I  was  shown  his  manufactory  of  shoes,  which, 
like  the  other,  is  full  of  ingenuity,  and,  in  regard  to  subdivision  of 
labor,  brings  this  fabric  on  a  level  with  the  oft-admired  manufactory 
of  pins.  Every  step  in  it  is  effected  by  the  most  elegant  and  precise 
machinery ;  while,  as  each  operation  is  performed  by  one  hand,  so 
each  shoe  passes  through  twenty-five  hands,  who  complete  from  the 
hide,  as  supplied  by  the  currier,  a  hundred  pairs  of  strong  and  well- 
finished  shoes  per  day.  All  the  details  are  performed  by  the  ingenious 
application  of  the  mechanic  powers ;  and  all  the  parts  are  character- 
ized by  precision,  uniformity,  and  accuracy.  As  each  man  performs 
but  one  step  in  the  process,  which  implies  no  knowledge  of  what  is 
done  by  those  who  go  before  or  follow  him,  so  the  persons  employed 
are  not  shoemakers,  but  wounded  soldiers,  who  are  able  to  learn  their 
respective  duties  in  a  few  hours.  The  contract  at  which  these  shoes 
are  delivered  to  government  is  6s.  Qd.  per  pair,  being  at  least  2s.  less 
than  what  was  paid  previously  for  an  unequal  and  cobbled  article." — 
SIK  RICHARD  PHILLIPS' s  Morning's  Walk  from  London  to  Kew. 

Brunei  is  most  popularly  known  by  his  great  work  of 
engineering  construction — the  Thames  Tunnel,  consisting 
of  a  brick-arched  double  roadway  under  the  river,  between 
Wapping  and  Rotherhithe. 

In  1799  an  attempt  was  made  to  construct  an  archway 
under  the  Thames,  from  Gravesend  to  Tilbury,  by  Ralph 
Dodd,  engineer;  and  in  1804  the  "Thames  Archway 
Company"  commenced  a  similar  work  from  Rotherhithe 
to  Limehouse,  under  the  direction  of  Vasey  and  Treve- 


THE   THAMES   TUNNEL.  399 

thick,  two  Cornish  miners  :  the  horizontal  excavation  had 
reached  1040  feet,  when  the  ground  broke  in  under  the 
pressure  of  high  tides,  and  the  work  was  abandoned, 
lifty-four  engineers  declaring  it  to  be  impracticable  to 
make  a  tunnel  under  the  Thames  of  any  useful  size  for 
commercial  progression. 

In  1814,  when  the  Allied  Sovereigns  visited  London, 
Brunei  submitted  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia  a  plan  for  a 
Tunnel  under  the  Neva,  by  which  the  terrors  of  the 
breaking  up  of  the  ice  of  that  river  in  the  spring  would 
have  been  obviated.  The  scheme  wrhich  he  was  not  per- 
mitted to  carry  out  at  St.  Petersburg  he  was  destined  to 
execute  in  London. 

It  was  planned  in  1823.  Among  the  earliest  subscrib- 
ers to  the  scheme  were  the  late  Duke  of  Wellington  and 
Dr.  Wollaston ;  and  in  1824  the  "Thames  Tunnel  Com- 
pany" was  formed  to  execute  the  work.  A  brick-work 
cylinder,  fifty  feet  in  diameter,  forty-two  feet  high,  and 
three  feet  thick,  was  first  commenced  by  Mr.  Brunei,  at 
150  feet  from  the  Rotherhithe  side  of  the  river;  and  on 
March  2,  1825,  a  stone  with  a  brass  inscription-plate  was 
laid  in  the  brick-work.  Upon  this  cylinder,  computed  to 
weigh  1000  tons,  was  set  a  powerful  steam-engine,  by 
which  the  earth  was  raised,  and  the  water  was  drained 
from  within  it ;  the  shaft  was  then  sunk  into  the  ground 
en  masse,  and  completed  to  the  depth  of  65  feet,  and  at 
the  depth  of  63  feet  the  horizontal  roadway  was  com- 
menced, with  an  excavation  larger  than  the  interior  of 
the  old  House  of  Commons.  The  plan  of  operation  had 
been  suggested  to  Brunei  in  1814  by  the  bore  of  the  sea- 
worm  Teredo  navalis  in  the  keel  of  a  ship  ;  showing 
how,  when  the  perforation  was  made  by  the  worm,  the 
sides  were  secured,  and  rendered  impervious  to -water 
by  the  insect  lining  the  passage  with  a  calcareous  secre- 
tion. With  the  auger-formed  head  of  the  worm  in  view, 
Brunei  employed  a  cast-iron  "  Shield,"  containing  thirty- 
six  frames  or  cells,  in  each  of  which  was  a  miner,  who 
cut  down  the  earth ;  and  a  bricklayer  simultaneously 
built  up  from  the  back  of  the  cell  the  brick  arch,  which 
was  pressed  forward  by  strong  screws.  Thus  were  com- 
pleted, from  Jan.  1,  1826,  to  April  27,  1827,  540  feet  of 
the  Tunnel.  On  May  18th  the  river  burst  into  the  works ; 


400  THE   THAMES   TUNNEL. 

but  the  opening  was  soon  filled  up  with  bags  of  clay,  the 
water  pumped  out  of  the  Tunnel,  and  the  work  resumed. 
At  the  length  of  600  feet  the  river  again  broke  in,  and 
six  men  were  drowned. 

The  Tunnel  was  again  emptied ;  but  the  work  was  dis- 
continued for  want  of  funds  for  seven  years.  Scores  of 
plans  were  now  proposed  for  its  completion,  and  above 
£5000  were  raised  by  public  subscription.  By  aid  of  a 
loan  sanctioned  by  Parliament  (mainly  through  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Duke  of  Wellington),  the  work  was  re- 
sumed, and  a  new  shield  constructed,  March,  1836,  in 
which  year  were  completed  117  feet;  in  1837,  only  29 
feet;  in  1838,  80  feet;  in  1839,  194  feet;  in  1840  (two 
months),  76  feet;  and  by  November,  1841,  the  remain- 
ing 60  feet,  reaching  to  the  shaft  which  had  been  sunk  at 
Wapping.  On  March  24  Brunei  was  knighted  by  the 
queen;  on  August  12  he  passed  through  the  Tunnel  from 
shore  to  shore;  and  March  25,  1843,  it  was  opened  as  a 
public  thoroughfare.  It  is  lighted  with  gas,  and  is  open 
to  passengers  day  and  night,  at  one  penny  toll. 

The  Tunnel  has  cost  about  £454,000  ;  to  complete 
the  carriage-descents  would  require  £180,000 :  total, 
£634,000.  The  dangers  of  the  work  were  many ;  some- 
times portions  of  the  shield  broke  with  the  noise  of  a 
cannon-shot ;  then  alarming  cries  told  of  some  irruption 
of  earth  or  water ;  but  the  excavators  were  much  more 
inconvenienced  by  fire  than  water,  gas  explosions  fre- 
quently wrapping  the  place  in  a  sheet  of  flame,  strangely 
mingling  with  the  water,  and  rendering  the  workmen  in- 
sensible. Yet,  with  all  these  perils,  but  seven  lives  were 
lost  in  constructing  the  Thames  Tunnel,  whereas  nearly 
forty  men  were  killed  during  the  building  of  new  Lon- 
don Bridge.  In  1833,  Mr.  Brunei  submitted  to  William 
IV.,  at  St.  James's  Palace,  "  An  Exposition  of  the  Facts 
and  Circumstances  relating  to  the  Tunnel."  Brunei  has 
also  left  a  minute  record  of  his  great  work :  it  is  well  de- 
scribed and  illustrated  in  Weale's  Quarterly  Papers  on 
Engineering.  A  fine  medal  was  struck  at  the  comple- 
tion of  the  work :  obv.  head  of  Brunei ;  rev.  interior  and 
longitudinal  section  of  the  Tunnel. 

the  width  of  the  Tunnel  is  35  feet;  height,  20  feet; 
each  archway  and  footpath,  clear  width,  about  14  feet; 


THE   THAMES-TUNNEL   SHIELD. 


401 


thickness  of  earth  between  the  crown  of  the  arch  and 
the  bed  of  the  river,  about  15  feet.  At  full  tide  the 
floor  of  the  tunnel  is  75 
feet  below  the  surface  of 
the  water. 

Sir  Isambard  Brunei  died 
at  his  house  in  Duke  Street, 
Westminster,  in  1849,  aged 
81.  He  left  an  only  son, 
whose  life  and  labors  will 
be  found  recorded  in  a  fu- 
ture sketch. 

We  engrave  a  section  of 
the  Tunnel  Shield. 

1.  The  Polling  boards  in  front 
of  the  Shield. 

2.  The  Jack-screws. 

3.  The  Top   Staves,  securing 
the  upper  part  of  the  excavation 
until  the  substitution  of  the  brick- 
work :   the  sides  of  each  division 
of  the  Shield  were  similarly  de- 
fended. 

4.  Screws,  to  raise  or  depress 
the  top  staves. 

5.  The    Legs,    being    Jack- 
screws,  fixed   by   ball-joints    to 
the  Shoes,  upon  which  the  whole 
division  stood. 

6.  The  Shoes. 

7  and  8.  The  Sockets,  where 
the  top  and  bottom  horizontal 
screws  were  fixed  to  force  the 
divisions  forward  as  the  work 
advanced. 


Section  of  the  T. 


-Tunnel  Shield. 


GEORGE  STEPHENSON,  THE  RAILWAY 
ENGINEER. 

IN  this  practical  age  of  physical  comfort,  it  is  scarcely 
possible  to  overestimate  the  value  and*  importance  of  the 
railway,  and  the  services  of  its  far-seeing  originator, 
GEORGE  STEPHENSON.  "  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  inventor  (to  all  practical  purposes)  of  the  locomotive 
steam-engine,*  and  the  founder  of  the  railway  system  of 
the  entire  world,  has  done  as  much  to  promote  human 
comfort  and  advantage  as  any  single  man  that  ever 
breathed ;  and,  more  particularly,  we  believe  that  there 
is  hardly  a  man,  woman,  or  child  in  Britain  who  is  not 
reaping  personal  profit  from  the  labors  of  this  great  and 
sterling  Englishman ;  from  the  results  of  his  wonderful 
ingenuity  to  devise,  and  his  unparalleled  perseverance  in 
urging  on  his  gigantic  invention,  at  a  time  when  great 
engineers,  eminent  lawyers,  and  leading  members  of  Par- 
liament were  not  ashamed  to  denounce  him  as  an  idiot, 
and  to  advise  his  consignment  to  Bedlam. "f  In  every 
word  of  this  honest  tribute  we  heartily  concur. 

At  a  few  miles  west  of  Newcastle,  in  the  colliery  vil- 
lage of  Wylam,  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Tyne,  amid  slag 
and  cinders,  there  still  stands  a  red-tiled  ordinary  cot- 
tage, of  two  stories,  divided  into  four  dwellings.  In  one 
of  these  rooms,  which  has  unplastered  walls,  bare  rafters, 
and  floor  of  clay,  George  Stephenson  was  born,  on  the 

*  It  is  believed  to  have  been  first  remarked  by  George  Stephenson, 
that  the  original  source  of  the  power  of  heat  engines  is  the  sun,  whose 
beams  furnish  the  energy  that  enables  vegetables  to  decompose  car- 
bonic acid,  and  so  to  form  a  store  of  carbon,  and  of  it  combustible 
compounds,  afterward  used  as  fuel.  The  combination  of  that  fuel 
with  oxygen  in  furnaces  produces  the  state  of  heat,  which,  being  com- 
municated to  some  fluid,  such  as  water,  causes  it  to  exert  an  aug- 
mented pressure,  and  occupy  an  increased  volume  ;  and  these  changes 
are  made  available  for  the  driving  of  mechanism. — PROF.  BANKING'S 
Manual  of  the  Steam-engine,  1 859. 

f  Saturday  Review,  No.  87. 


BIRTHPLACE    OF    GEORGE   STEPHENSON.  403 

9th  of  June,  1781.  At  a  few  yards  from  the  door  is  the 
line  of  rails  which  runs  from  the  colliery  toward  New- 
castle, and  has  been  put  in  place  of  the  old  tram-way* 
along  which  the  coal-wagons  were  formerly  drawn  by 
horses.  Across  the  river  the  scenery  is  very  beautiful, 
and  the  colliery  appears  in  the  distance ;  and  at  the  back 


Birthplace  of  George  Steplienson,  at  Wylam. 

of  the  house,  the  rich  land,  partly  clothed  with  wood, 
rises  steeply  toward  Haddon-on-the-Wall.  George's  pa- 
rents, Robert  and  Mabel  Stephenson,  were  "  honest  folk, 
but  sair  haudden  doun  in  the  world."  His  father  was 
fireman  of  the  pumping-engine  of  the  colliery,  and  his 
mother  was  "  a  rale  canny  body."  There  were  six  chil- 
dren, of  whom  George  was  the  second,  and  the  family 
was  maintained  on  the  fireman's  wages  of  twelve  shil- 
ling^ a  week ;  food  was  so  dear  that  neither  of  the  chil- 
dren was  sent  to  school,  instead  of  which  George  was 
taken  by  his  father  bird-nesting,  or  told  stories  of  Robin- 
son Crusoe,  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  etc.  George's  interest  in 
birds'-nests  never  left  him  till  his  dying  day,  nor  were 
other  sights  of  his  childhood  less  identified  with  the 
serious  business  of  his  life.  In  the  rails  of  the  wrooden 
tram-road  before  his  cottage,  on  which  he  saw  the  coal- 

*  Called  fram-roads  from  having  been  first  laid  down  by  Outram, 
from  whose  name,  omitting  the  first  syllable,  the  word  is  said  to  have 
been  derived. 


404  BOYHOOD   OF   GEORGE   STEPHENSON. 

wagons  dragged  by  horses  from  the  pit  to  the  landing- 
quay,  half  the  destiny  of  an  age  was  latent,  to  be  evolved 
by  the  very  boy  who,  after  his  own  probation  was  over, 
had  to  keep  his  younger  brothers  and  sisters  out  of  the 
way  of  the  horses.  He  himself  was,  however,  so  little 
as  to  hide  himself  when  the  owner  of  the  colliery  came 
round,  lest  he  should  be  thought  unfit  to  earn  his  wages. 

When  little  "  Geordie  Stephie"  was  eight  years  old,  his 
father  removed  to  Dewley  Burn,  about  four  miles  dis- 
tant; and  George,  to  his  great  joy,  obtained  the  place  of 
cowboy,  at  2d.  a  day.  He  spent  much  of  his  leisure  in 
erecting  Liliputian  mills  in  the  little  streams  that  run 
into  the  Dewley  Bog,  and  in  making  day  engines,  along 
with  a  certain  Thomas  Tholoway ;  the  boys  found  the 
clay  in  the  adjoining  bog,  and  the  hemlock  which  grew 
about  supplied  them  with  imaginary  steam-pipes;  and 
the  villagers  to  this  day  point  out,  "  just  aboon  the  east 
end,"  where  the  future  engineer  made  his  first  models. 

In  due  course,  George  had  his  wages  doubled  for  hoe- 
ing turnips.  He  was  next  employed  as  "  picker"  or  sorter 
of  the  coals.  It  was  a  proud  day  when  he  was  advanced 
to  be  driver  of  the  gin-horse  at  8d. ;  "  and  there  are  those 
who  still  remember  him  in  that  capacity,  as  a  '  grit  bare- 
legged laddie,'  whom  they  describe  as  full  of  tricks  and 
fun."  George  was  promoted  to  the  post  of  assistant 
fireman  when  only  fourteen  years  of  age,  at  Is.  a,  day. 
At  the  colliery  at  Throckley  Bridge  he  was  advanced  to 
12s.  a  week,  and  at  seventeen  he  became  an  engineman 
or  plugman,  while  his  father  continued  to  stoke  the  fire ; 
and  on  receiving  his  first  week's  wages,  he  said  exulting- 
ly  to  a  companion,  "  I  am  now  a  made  man  for  life."  At 
this  time  he  was  a  big,  raw-boned  man,  fond  of  displaying 
his  strength  and  activity  at  the  village  feasts,  but  re- 
markable for  his  temperance,  sobriety,  industry,  and  good 
temper.  He  soon  studied  and  mastered  the  working,  of 
his  engine,  which  become  a  sort  of  pet  with  him.  He 
delighted  to  find  some  one  who  could  read  to  him  by  the 
engine-fire  out  of  any  book  or  stray  newspaper;  and 
having  heard  that  the  Egyptians  hatched  birds'  eggs  by 
artificial  heat,  he  endeavored  to  do  the  same  in  his  en- 
gine-house. He  learned  also  that  the  wonderful  engines 
of  Watt  and  Boulton  were  to  be  found  described  in 


HIS   PROGRESS.  405 

books,  which  induced  him  to  attend  a  night-school  at  3d. 
a  week,  to  learn  his  letters  and  practice  "  pot-hooks,"  so 
that  at  eighteen  he  had  learned  to  read,  and  at  nineteen 
he  was  proud  to  be  able  to  write  his  own  name.  He  next 
went  to  the  night-school  of  a  Scotch  domine,  a  skilled 
arithmetician,  and  there  learned  "  figuring"  much  faster 
than  his  schoolfellows :  he  worked  out  his  sums  by  the 
engine  fire,  and  solved  the  arithmetical  questions  set  him 
upon  his  slate  by  his  master,  so  that  he  soon  became  well 
advanced  in  arithmetic.  In  1801  he  became  brakesman 
at  the  colliery ;  and  he  began  to  increase  his  income  by 
mending  the  workmen's  shoes.  He  went  on  with  his 
writing  lessons;  and  by  the  next  year,  1802,  when  he 
married  a  respectable  young  woman,  Fanny  Henderson, 
he  signed  his  name  in  a  good  legible  round-hand. 

He  now  took  up  his  abode  in  a  humble  cottage  at  Wil- 
lington  Quay,  near  Newcastle.  He  occupied  his  leisure 
in  constructing  little  machines,  and  attempting  to  dis- 
cover the  perpetual  motion.  He  soon  advanced  from 
mending  shoes  to  making  them ;  and  an  accident  having 
obliged  him  to  repair  his  own  clock,  he  became  the  gen- 
eral clock  cleaner  and  mender  for  the  neighborhood,  thus 
improving  his  own  mechanical  skill  while  adding  to  his 
income.  At  Willington,  he  made  the  first  self-acting  in- 
cline used  in  that  district,  by  which  the  descending  laden 
wagons  on  the  tram-road  were  made  to  draw  up  the 
empty  wagons.  Here,  on  the  16th  of  November,  1803, 
was  born  his  only  son,  Robert,  who  became  second  only 
to  his  father  as  a  railway  engineer.  George  Stephenson 
now  became  something  more  than  a  mere  workman,  by 
studying  the  principles  of  mechanism  and  the  laws  by 
which  his  engine  worked.  By  steady  conduct  and  sav- 
ing habits,  he  procured  the  coveted  means  of  educating 
his  son,  who,  in  after  years,  when  he  had  risen  to  the 
highest  scientific  eminence,  declared,  with  touching  grati- 
tude, "  however  extensive  his  own  connection  with  rail- 
ways, all  he  had  known,  and  all  he  had  himself  done, 
was  due  to  the  parent  whose  memory  he  cherished  and 
revered." 

In  1804,  George  Stephenson  removed  to  Killingworth 
Colliery,  seven  miles  north  of  Newcastle ;  while  there, 
his  poor  wife  died.  He  spent  the  next  year  at  a  col- 


406  THE   FIKST   KAILS. 

liery  near  Montrose,  in  Scotland ;  and  on  his  return,  he 
found  his  aged  father  had  been  accidentally  scalded  and 
blinded  by  a  discharge  of  steam,  let  in  upon  him  while 
repairing  an  engine.  He  at  once  devoted  all  his  savings 
to  relieve  the  old  man's  distress,  and  place  him  in  com- 
parative comfort.  So  disheartened  was  Stephenson  about 
this  period,  that  he  thought  of  emigrating  to  Canada. 
But  his  prospects  brightened,  through  his  perseverance 
in  the  colliery  work,  and  by  mending  clocks  and  shoes, 
and  even  cutting  out  the  clothes  of  the  workmen.  He 
also  signalized  himself  by  curing  a  wheezy  engine,  at 
which  all  the  engineers  of  the  neighborhood  had  failed : 
he  got  £10  for  this  job ;  from  this  day  his  services  as  an 
engineer  came  into  request ;  and  a  vacancy  occurring,  he 
was  appointed  the  engine- wright  to  the  colliery,  with  a 
hundred  pounds  a  year.  He  now  began  to  turn  his 
thoughts  to  the  locomotive  steam-engine. 

Railways,  consisting  of  wooden  beams,  tram,  or  wagon 
ways,  were  introduced  as  early  as  1602  in  the  collieries 
in  the  north  of  England,  to  reduce  the  labor  of  drawing 
coals  from  the  pits  to  the  place  of  shipment.  Lord-keeper 
North,  in  1676,  describes  such  rails  of  timber  from  the 
colliery  to  the  river,  exactly  straight  and  parallel,  with 
the  rollers  of  bulky  carts  made  to  fit  the  rails.  This 
"  oaken  way"  first  consisted  of  pieces  of  wood  simply 
imbedded  in  the  ordinary  road.  A  century  and  a  hall' 
elapsed  before  the  rails  were  laid  upon  cross-pieces,  or 
sleepers,  to  which  they  were  fastened  by  pegs.  In  1716, 
thin  plates  of  malleable  iron  were  nailed  upon  portions 
of  the  wooden  rails.  Next  followed  cast-iron  rails.  A 
wooden  railway  was  used  at  the  Coalbrookdale  Iron- 
works about  1767,  when,  the  price  of  iron  becoming  very 
low,  it  was  determined,  in  order  to  keep  the  furnaces  at 
work,  to  cast  bars,  which  might  be  laid  down  upon  the 
wooden  rails  to  save  their  wear,  but  which  it  was  pro- 
posed to  take  up,  and  sell  as  pigs  of  iron,  in  case  of  a 
sudden  rise.  This  is  confirmed  by  an  entry  in  the  Com- 
pany's books  of  between  five  and  six  tons  of  cast-iron 
rails,  but  "  only  as  an  experiment,  on  the  suggestion  of 
one  of  the  partners."  A  few  years  after,  cast-iron  rails, 
with  an  upright  flange,  were  first  used  at  the  colliery  of 
the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  near  Sheffield,  in  1776.  Here  we 
must  leave  the  Railwav  for  the  Locomotive. 


THE   FIKST   LOCOMOTIVE.  407 

Various  kinds  of  propelling  power  had  been  proposed 
for  use  on  these  plate-ways,  as  they  were  still  called. 
Sails  had  their  advocate.  The  application  of  the  steam- 
engine  to  locomotion  on  land  was,  according  to  Watt, 
suggested  by  Robison  in  1759.  In  1784,  Watt  patented 
a  locomotive  engine,  which,  however,  he  never  executed ; 
and  about  the  same  time,  Murdoch,  assistant  to  Watt, 
made  a  very  efficient  model.  In  1802,  Trevethick  and 
Vivian  patented  a  locomotive  engine,  which,  in  1804  or 
1805,  traveled  at  about  five  miles  an  hour,  with  a  net 
load  of  ten  tons.  The  use  of  fixed  engines,  to  drag  trains 
on  railways  by  ropes,  was  introduced  by  Cook  in  1808. 
Some  years  after,  Mr.  Blackett  constructed  an  engine  for 
the  Wylam  Colliery;  but  as  it  would  only  travel  one 
mile  an  hour,  it  was  soon  laid  aside. 

Several  other  "  traveling  engines"  were  made  by  other 
engineers,  with  partial  success ;  but  it  was  left  to  Stephen- 
son  to  render  the  locomotive  practically  useful.  He 
pressed  the  matter  on  the  lessees  of  the  Killingworth  col- 
liery, and  he  made  for  them  a  locomotive,  which  was  first 
tried  on  their  railway  July  25,  1814  :  it  was  very  clumsy 
and  ugly,  but  it  drew  thirty  tons  at  four  miles  an  hour. 
Some  improvements  were  made  in  this  engine,  and  next 
year  Stephenson  built  a  locomotive  which  contained  the 
germ  of  all  that  has  since  been  effected ;  "  there  being- 
no  material  difference  between  the  cumbrous  machines 
that  screamed  and  jolted  along  the  coal  tram-road  in 
1815,  and  the  elegant  and  noiseless  locomotive  which 
now  takes  out  the  express  train,  gliding  smoothly  and 
swiftly  as  a  bird  through  the  air." 

The  engines  which  Stephenson  constructed  in  1815 
worked  away  at  Killingworth,  but  attracted  little  notice : 
their  author  always  maintained  that  some  day  such  en- 
gines and  railways  would  be  well  known  all  over  Britain, 
but  he  was  regarded  as  an  innocent  enthusiast. 

Meanwhile,  a  striking  suggestion  of  uniting  railway 
communication  into  a  system,  as  connecting  lines  are 
now  called,  was  made  by  an  unprofessional  writer,  the 
first  author  on  the  subject  to  notice  which  was  Mr. 
Smiles,  in  his  admirable  Life  of  George  Stephenson. 

This  suggestion  occurs  in  Sir  Richard  Phillips's  Morning's  Walk 
from  London  to  Kew,  and  was  written  in  1813.  On  reaching  the 


408  THE   EAILWAY    SYSTEM   SUGGESTED. 

Surrey  Iron  Kailway,  at  Wandsworth,  where  a  train  of  carriages  was 
drawn  by  one  horse,  Sir  Richard  says,  ' '  I  thought  of  the  millions 
which  have  been  spent  at  Malta,  four  or  five  of  which  might  have 
been  the  means  of  extending  double  lines  of  iron  railway  from  London 
to  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Holyhead,  Milford,  Falmouth,  Yarmouth, 
Dover,  and  Portsmouth.  A  reward  of  a  single  thousand  would  have 
supplied  coaches,  and  other  vehicles,  of  various  degrees  of  speed,  with 
the  best  tackle  for  readily  turning  out ;  and  we  might,  ere  this,  have 
witnessed  our  mail-coaches  running  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour, 
drawn  by  a  single  horse,  or  impelled  fifteen  miles  an  hour  by  Blenkin- 
sop'e  steam-engine."  The  writer  of  these  sagacious  remarks  lived 
until  1840,  so  that  he  had  witnessed  a  triumph  greater  than  his  long- 
cherished  hope. 

In  the  interval,  i.  e.,  in  1825,  Sir  Richard  Phillips  pub- 
lished the  first  Treatise  on  Railway  s^  by  Nicholas  Wood, 
of  Killing  worth,  wherein  he  deprecates  any  attempt  at 
a  greater  speed  than  fourteen  miles  an  hour  upon  rail- 
ways. Yet  this  short-sightedness  was  exceeded  by  a 
writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review  : 

What  (said  the  reviewer)  can  be  more  palpably  ridiculous  than  the 
prospect  held  out  of  locomotives  traveling  twice  as  fast  as  stage- 
coaches !  We  should  as  soon  expect  the  people  of  Woolwich  to  suffer 
themselves  to  be  fired  off  upon  one  of  Congreve's  ricochet  rockets,  as 
trust  themselves  to  the  mercy  of  such  a  machine  going  at  such  a  rate. 
We  will  back  old  Father  Thames  against  the  Woolwich  Kailway  for 
any  sum.  We  trust  that  Parliament  will,  in  all  railways  it  may  sanc- 
tion, limit  the  speed  to  eight  or  nine  miles  an  hour,  which  we  entirely 
agree  with  Mr.  Sylvester  is  as  great  as  can  be  ventured  on  with  safety. 

In  1819,  Stephenson  turned,  for  the  owners  of  Hetton 
Colliery,  their  tram-road  into  a  railway ;  and,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  hilly  country,  formed  self-acting  inclines, 
the  locomotive  working  on  the  level  part :  this  line  was 
opened  in  1822. 

In  1819,  also,  Mr.  Edward  Pease,  supported  by  a  num- 
ber of  Quaker  friends,  obtained,  after  much  opposition, 
an  Act  of  Parliament  for  the  construction  of  a  colliery 
railway  from  Stockton  to  Darlington.  In  1821,  George 
Stephenson  applied  to  Mr.  Pease  to  lay  out  the  line. 
The  wealthy  Quaker  was  prepossessed  in  favor  of 
Stephenson,  "  there  was  such  an  honest,  sensible  look 
about  him,  and  he  seemed  so  modest  and  unpretending." 
Mr.  Pease  had  contemplated  the  use  of  horse-power 
upon  his  railway ;  but  Stephenson  assured  him  that  the 
engine  which  had  worked  for  years  at  Killingworth  was 


THE    LIVERPOOL    AND    MANCHESTER    HALLWAY.       409 

worth  fifty  horses.  He  went  and  saw  the  engine,  and 
George  Stephenson  was  appointed  engineer  to  the  Stock- 
ton and  Darlington  Railway,  with  a  salary  of  £300  a 
year ;  and  he  removed  to  Darlington  with  his  family  (he 
had  married  a  second  time  in  1819)  in  the  year  1823. 
He  laid  out  every  foot  of  the  line ;  and  he  built,  in  a 
factory  at  Newcastle,  three  engines  for  use  upon  it,  with 
£1000  given  him  by  public  subscription  for  his  invention 
of  a  safety-lamp  for  use  in  coal-pits.  The  railway  was 
opened  September,  1825,  when  the  first  train,  38  car- 
riages, with  6()p  passengers,  was  drawn  by  a  single  en- 
gine at  from  four  to  twelve  miles  an  hour,  the  first  pas- 
senger carriage  being  an  old  stage  coach  placed  upon  a 
wooden  frame.  The  engines  did  their  daily  work  admi- 
rably ;  and  the  little  factory  at  Newcastle,  founded  mainly 
to  bring  together  more  skillful  workmen  than  the  country 
blacksmiths  who  had  made  the  first  locomotives,  gradual- 
ly grew  into  a  gigantic  establishment,  which  for  many 
years  supplied  engines,  drivers,  and  superintendents  for 
all  the  railways  of  Europe. 

The  No.  1  engine  made  by  Stephenson  for  the  above 
railway,  and  which  was  the  first  machine  ever  run  on  a 
Parliamentary  line,  has  been  preserved,  and  was,  in  1859, 
erected  upon  a  pedestal  at  Darlington,  as  a  public  memo- 
rial of  the  commencement  of  the  railway  system ;  and  it 
is  a  far  more  interesting  object  than  the  groups  of  monu- 
mental flattery  which  we  are  accustomed  to  see  in  public 
places. 

The  grand  railway  experiment  of  a  line  between  Liver- 
pool and  Manchester  was  now  commenced.  It  met  with 
great  opposition,  especially  from  the  authorities  of  the 
Bridgewater  Canal.  Nevertheless,  a  company  was  form- 
ed, and  all  the  shares  in  it  were  immediately  taken  up. 
A  line  of  railway  was  surveyed  and  mapped  out,  in  spite 
of  the  furious  resistance  of  land-owners ;  personal  vio- 
lence was  threatened  to  the  engineers  employed,  and  the 
most  absurd  stories  were  circulated  as  to  the  dangerous 
nuisances  to  be  apprehended  from  the  passing  engines. 
The  best  friends  of  the  locomotive  engine  lamented  that 
Stephenson  should  venture  to  predict  that  railway-trains 
would  some  day  run  at  twelve  and  sixteen  miles  an  hour ; 
and  members  of  the  Parliamentary  Committee  whispered 

S 


410      THE   LIVEKPOOL   AND   MANCHESTER   BAIL  WAY. 

doubts  of  the  engineer's  sanity.  The  Bill  was  thrown 
out  by  a  majority  of  one;  but  early  in  the  next  session, 
1826,  an  act  was  passed  authorizing  the  construction  of 
the  railway,  and  Mr.  Stephenson  was  appointed  engineer, 
with  a  salary  of  £1000  a  year.  He  set  to  work  at  once, 
and  in  June,  1826,  began  to  make  the  road  across  Chat 
Moss,  the  great  morass  of  four  miles.  Week  after  week, 
thousands  of  cubic  yards  were  ingulfed,  without  the  least 
apparent  progress.  At  length  the  directors  proposed  to 
abandon  it;  but  Stephenson  persevered,  and  the  four 
miles  through  Chat  Moss  now  form  the  soundest  part  of 
the  line.  The  expense  was  about  £28,000,  whereas  an 
engineer  had  declared  before  Parliament  that  the  cost 
must  be  at  least  £2*70,000.  Stephenson  organized  all 
the  works  himself,  there  being  then  neither  contractors 
nor  navvies :  he  sent  for  his  son  Robert,  who  had  been 
some  years  in  America,  for  his  aid  and  counsel  in  the 
great  work. 

The  Railway  had  almost  been  completed  before  the 
motive-power  to  be  employed  on  it  was  decided  on. 
Stephenson  stood  alone  in  urging  the  directors  to  em- 
ploy the  locomotive;  but  other  engineers  who  were 
consulted,  without  exception,  recommended  stationary 
engines,  which  should  draw  the  trains  by  the  help  of 
ropes.  Stephenson  expostulated  and  entreated,  and  at 
length  worried  the  directors  into  giving  the  locomotive 
a  fair  trial.  A  simple  remark,  made  by  him  about  this 
time,  shows  with  what  vivid  reality  the  future  passage- 
railway  was  present  to  his  mind :  "I  said  to  my  friends 
that  there  was  no  limit  to  the  speed  of  such  an  engine, 
provided  the  works  could  be  made  to  stand"  He  had 
already,  by  his  invention  of  the  tubular  boiler  (in  con- 
junction with  his  son),  raised  the  speed  of  the  engine 
from  seven  to  thirty  miles  an  hour. 

A  large  heating  surface  is  indispensable  to  generate  the  steam  re- 
quired ;  but  the  space  allowed  for  the  whole  engine  on  the  carriage 
being  limited,  Stephenson's  ingenuity  was  exercised  in  providing  the 
former  without  unduly  increasing  the  latter.  The  flame  and  heated 
air  leave  the  fire-box  at  a  very  high  temperature,  and  much  heat 
would  be  wasted  if  they  were  allowed  to  escape  immediately  into  the 
atmosphere  ;  but  Stephenson  had  already  supplemented  the  ordinary 
operation  of  the  furnace  by  this  heated  air.  As  high-pressure  engines 
are  used,  the  steam  escapes  from  the  cylinder,  after  having  done  its 


THE  "ROCKET"  PKIZE  ENGINE.  411 

work,  at  a  high  temperature ;  and  being  made  to  pass  into  the  smoke- 
box,  and  then  up  the  chimney,  it  acts  as  a  powerful  blast  upon  the  fire. 
Instead  of  blowing  the  fire,  it  blows  the  chimney ;  and  more  air  will, 
of  course,  enter  the  fire  if  the  chimney  be  cleared  more  quickly.  This, 
then,  was  Stephenson's  great  improvement,  and  it  enabled  him  to  give 
effect  to  another.  Putting  the  chimney  at  one  end  of  the  boiler,  and 
the  fire-box  at  the  other,  he  connected  the  two  by  a  number  of  metal 
tubes  passing  from  the  back  of  the  furnace  to  the  smoke-box.  Hot 
air  escaping  through  these  tubes  heats  the  water  by  which  they  are 
surrounded,  and  enables  engines  to  travel  at  the  rate  of  twenty,  sixty, 
or  even  seventy  miles  an  hour. — JAMES  SIME,  M.A. ;  Edinburgh  Es- 
says, 1856. 

Stephenson  prepared  an  engine  (the  Rocket) ,  construct- 
ed on  this  principle,  to  contend  for  the  prize  of  £500 
which  the  Railway  Directors  offered  for  the  best  engine, 
to  be  produced  on  a  certain  day,  to  draw  a  weight  of 
twenty  tons  at  ten  miles  an  hour.  The  trial  took  place 
on  October  6,  1829,  at  Rainhill.  There  were  four  en- 
gines, but  Stephenson's  RocJcet  won  the  prize :  it  drew 
thirteen  tons  at  a  maximum  speed  of  twenty-nine  miles 
an  hour,  and  thus  decided  for  ever  the  use  of  locomotive 
engines  on  railways. 


The  Rocket  prize  Locomotive  Engine. 

The  opening  of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Rail- 
way took  place  on  the  15th  of  September,  1830.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington,  then  prime  minister,  Sir  Robert  Peel, 


412  THE  "ROCKET"  PRIZE  ENGINE. 

and  other  distinguished  persons,  were  present ;  but  the 
sad  death  of  Mr.  Huskisson,  who  fell  beneath  the  train  in 
motion,  threw  a  gloom  upon  the  day.  Little  passenger- 
traffic  had  been  looked  for ;  but,  from  the  opening,  the 
railway  carried  about  1200  passengers  daily,  and  in  five 
years  afterward  it  carried  half  a  million  yearly.  Stephen- 
son's  predicted  ten  miles  rose  to  thirty  miles  an  hour, 
and  the  net  profit  of  the  company  exceeded  £80,000  a 
year.  The  Rocket  often  attained  a  speed  of  sixty  miles 
an  hour ;  it  weighed  four  and  a  quarter  tons :  the  loco- 
motive of  the  present  day  ranges  from  five  to  fifty  tons 
weight,  and  its  load  from  fifty  to  five  hundred  tons. 

What  has  become  of  the  Rocket  engine  ?  The  French 
preserve  with  the  greatest  care  the  locomotive  construct- 
ed by  Cugnot,  which  is  to  this  day  to  be  seen  in  the  Con- 
servatoire des  Arts  at  Paris.  The  Rocket  has  scarcely 
been  so  honored. 

" Changing  hands,  says  Professor  G.  Wilson,  "more  than  once,  and 
:it  length  discarded,  like  an  old  horse  as  soon  as  it  is  unfit  for  work,  it 
was  finally  purchased  by  the  inventor's  son,  and  is  now  preserved  in 
the  engine-works  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne.  It  can  not  always  continue 
under  filial  guardianship ;  yet,  when  we  consider  that  a  century  hence 
hundreds  of  curious  pilgrims  will  gladly  travel  from  distant  lands  to 
study  the  famous  Rocket  engine,  if  it  be  in  existence  to  be  studied,  we 
can  not  but  hope  that  at  least  it  will  not  be  willfully  destroyed.  We 
may  have  a  thousand  better  engines,  but  we  can  never  have  the  Rocket 
again.  As  the  first  of  its  race,  the  most  infantile  and  the  most  ven- 
erable of  engines,  it  has  merits  which  no  later  engine  can  possibly 
possess." 

From  1830  railways  began  to  overspread  England.  In 
conjunction  with  his  son,  Stephenson  was  appointed  the 
engineer  of  the  London  and  Birmingham,  the  Grand 
Junction,  the  Midland  and  the  North  Midland,  and  other 
important  lines.  In  1840  he  settled  at  Tapton  House, 
near  Chesterfield.  His  pupils  became  eminent  engineers, 
:imong  whom  were  Locke  and  Gooch,  Swanwick  and 
Birkenshaw.  To  his  honor  be  it  said,  that  Stephenson 
held  aloof  from  all  the  schemes  of  the  railway  mania  of 
1845-6,  and  he  strongly  condemned  the  reckless  spirit  in 
which  Parliament  authorized  lines  which  could  not  pos- 
sibly remunerate  the  shareholders.  In  1845  he  visited 
Spain  to  survey  a  proposed  line  of  railway,  having  pre- 
viously laid  out  the  government  system  of  railways  in 


HOXORS   TO    GEOKGE   STEPHENSON.  413 

Belgium,  for  which  he  received  a  knighthood  from  King 
Leopold.  He  also  constructed  lines  in  Holland,  France, 
Germany,  and  Italy.  Stephenson's  declining  years  were 
spent  at  Tapton,  where  he  became  an  enthusiastic  horti- 
culturist, and  began  working  the  Claycross  Collieries. 
He  took  great  interest  in  the  Mechanics'  Institute  in  his 
neighborhood ;  and  he  was  the  founder  and  president  of 
the  Institution  of  Mechanical  Engineers  of  Birmingham. 
His  early  fondness  for  all  kinds  of  animals  revived.  He 
had  many  attached  pets  among  his  dogs,  horses,  and 
birds ;  and  he  was  fond  of  rambling  about  the  neighbor- 
ing country,  bird-nesting  or  nutting.  Unfortunately,  he 
spent  too  much  time  in  the  unwholesome  air  of  his  forcing- 
houses  at  Tapton,  and  he  contracted  an  intermittent  fever, 
which  carried  him  off  after  a  few  days'  illness,  on  the  18th 
of  August,  1848,  in  the  sixty-seventh  year  of  his  age. 
The  shops  of  Chesterfied  were  closed,  and  all  business 
was  suspended,  on  the  day  of  his  funeral.  A  plain  monu- 
ment in  Chesterfield  Church  marks  his  resting-place. 

In  1844  a  fine  statue  of  Stephenson  was  erected  in  St. 
George's  Hall,  Liverpool,  and  in  1854  there  was  set  up 
in  the  great  hall  of  the  terminus  of  the  Northwestern 
Railway,  London,  Baily's  colossal  marble  statue  of  Ste- 
phenson, purchased  by  the  subscriptions  of  3150  work- 
ing-men and  178  private  friends. 

The  genius  and  worth  of  George  Stephenson  are  to  be  commemo- 
rated by  a  characteristic  group  of  sculpture,  to  be  erected  at  New- 
castle-on-Tyne.  It  is  to  consist  of  a  colossal  statue  of  Stephenson 
upon  an  embellished  pedestal.  The  model  was  completed  by  Mr. 
Lough,  the  sculptor,  in  the  autumn  of  1859.  The  height  of  the  figure 
is  seven  feet  eight  inches,  but  the  actual  casting  model  will  measure 
ten  feet  high.  The  figure  is  upright,  and  attired  in  modern  costume, 
with  a  plaid  crossing  the  chest  from  the  left  shoulder ;  the  right  hand, 
holding  a  pair  of  callipers,  rests  on  the  breast,  and  the  left  on  a  loco- 
motive engine  of  very  early  form.  The  likeness  is  good,  and  the  head 
is  profoundly  thoughtful.  The  pedestal  intended  for  the  support  of 
this  statue  presents  at  its  four  angles  types  of  the  labor  necessary  to 
engineering  works;  these  are  accordingly  a  navvy,  a  blacksmith,  a 
pitman,  and  an  engineer. 

There  are  countries  where  such  a  man  would  have  been  ennobled, 
and  covered  with  ribbons  and  orders ;  here  he  died  as  he  had  lived, 
plain  George  Stephenson.  But  he  has  a  most  noble  memorial  in  the 
great  system  of  iron  roads  which  converge  to  Britain's  great  cities, 
and  are  ramified  away  to  her  quietest  country  nooks. 


EGBERT  STEPHENSON  AND  RAILWAY 
WORKS. 

THIS  distinguished  son  of  a  distinguished  father,  George 
Stephenson,  was  born  at  Willington  Quay,  on  the  Tyne, 
about  six  miles  below  Newcastle,  on  November  16,  1803. 
Here,  in  his  humble  home,  he  was  familiarized  from  his 
earliest  years  with  the  steady  industry  of  his  parents ; 
for,  when  his  father  was  not  busy  in  shoemaking,  or  cut- 
ting out  shoe-lasts,  or  cleaning  clocks,  or  making  clothes 
for  the  pitmen,  he  was  occupied  with  some  drawing  or 
model,  with  which  he  sought  to  improve  himself.  Rob- 
ert's mother  very  soon  died ;  and  his  father,  w^hose  heart 
was  bound  up  in  the  boy,  had  to  take  the  sole  charge  of 
him.  George  Stephenson  felt  deeply  his  own  want  of 
education,  and,  in  order  that  his  son  might  not  suffer 
from  the  same  cause,  sent  him  first  to  a  school  at  Long 
Benton,  and  afterward  to  the  school  of  a  Mr.  Bruce,  in 
Newcastle,  one  of  the  best  seminaries  of  the  district. 
There  young  Robert  remained  for  three  years ;  and  his 
father  not  only  encouraged  him  to  study  for  himself,  but 
also  made  him,  in  a  measure,  the  instrument  of  his  own 
better  education,  by  getting  the  lad  to  read  for  him  at 
the  library  in  Newcastle,  and  bring  home  the  results  of 
his  weekly  acquirements,  as  well  as  frequently  a  scien- 
tific book,  which  father  and  son  studied  together.  They 
jointly  produced  a  sun-dial,  which  was  placed  in  the 
wall  over  the  door  of  their  cottage  at  Killing  worth,  and 
of  which  the  father  was  always  proud.  On  leaving 
school  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  Robert  Stephenson  was  ap- 
prenticed to  Mr.  Nicholas  Wood,  at  Killingworth,  to 
learn  the  business  of  the  colliery,  where  he  served  for 
three  years,  and  became  familiar  with  all  the  depart- 
ments of  underground  work.  His  father  was  engaged 
at  the  same  colliery,  and  the  evenings  of  both  were  usu- 
ally devoted  to  their  mutual  improvement.  Mr.  Smiles 
describes  the  animated  discussions  which  in  this  way 


GEORGE  STEPHENSON. 


ROBERT  STEPHBNSON. 


SIK  I  M.  BRUNEI* 


I.  K.  BRUNEI,. 


ROBERT'S  EDUCATION.  417 

took  place  in  their  humble  cottage,  these  discussions 
frequently  turning  on  the  then  comparatively  unknown 
powers  of  the  locomotive  engine  daily  at  work  on  the 
wagon-way.  The  son  was  even  more  enthusiastic  "than 
the  father  on  the  subject.  It  was  probably  out  of  these 
discussions  that  there  arose  in  George  Stephenson' s  mind 
the  desire  to  give  Robert  a  still  better  education.  He 
sent  him  in  the  year  1820  to  the  Edinburgh  University, 
where  Dr.  Hope  was  lecturing  on  chemistry,  Sir  John 
Leslie  on  natural  philosophy,  and  Professor  Jameson  on 
natural  history.  Though  young  Stephenson  remained  in 
Edinburgh  but  six  months,  it  is  supposed  that  he  did  as 
much  work  in  that  time  as  most  students  do  in  a  three 
years'  course.  It  cost  his  father  some  £80 ;  but  the 
money  was  not  grudged  when  the  son  returned  to  Kil- 
lingworth,  in  the  summer  of  1821,  bringing  with  him  the 
prize  for  mathematics,  which  he  had  gained  at  the  Uni- 
versity. 

In  1822  Robert  Stephenson  was  apprenticed  to  his  fa- 
ther, who  had  by  this  time  established  his  locomotive 
manufactory  at  Newcastle;  but  his  health  giving  way 
after  a  couple  of  years'  exertion,  he  accepted  a  commis- 
sion to  examine  the  gold  and  silver  mines  of  South 
America.  The  change  of  air  and  scene  contributed  to 
the  restoration  of  his  health ;  and,  after  having  founded 
the  Silver  Mining  Company  of  Columbia,  he  returned  to 
England  in  December,  1827,  in  time  to  assist  his  father 
in  the  arrangements  of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester 
Railway  by  placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the  factory  at 
Newcastle.  About  this  time,  indeed,  he  seems  to  have 
almost  exclusively  devoted  his  attention  to  the  study  of 
the  locomotive  engine,  the  working  of  which  he  explain- 
ed, jointly  with  Mr.  Locke,  in  a  report  replying  to  that  of 
Messrs.  Walker  and  Rastrick,  who  advocated  stationary 
engines.  How  well  he  succeeded  in  carrying  out  the 
idea  of  his  father  was  afterward  seen,  when  he  obtained 
the  prize  of  £500  offered  by  the  directors  of  the  Liver- 
pool and  Manchester  Railway  for  the  best  locomotive. 
He  himself  gave  the  entire  credit  of  the  invention  to  his 
father  and  Sir.  Booth,  although  it  is  believed  that  the 
Rocket,  which  was  the  designation  of  the  prize- winning 
engine,  was  entered  in  the  name  of  Robert  Stephenson. 

S2 


418  THE 

Even  this  locomotive,  however,  was  far  from  perfect,  and 
was  not  destined  to  be  the  future  model.  The  young 
engineer  saw  where  the  machine  was  defective,  and  de- 
signed the  Planet,  which,  with  its  multitubular  boiler, 
with  cylinders  in  the  smoke-box,  with  its  cranked  axle- 
tree,  and  with  its  external  frame-work,  forms,  in  spite  of 
•some  modifications,  the  type  of  the  locomotive  engines 
employed  up  to  the  present  day.  About  the  same  time 
he  designed  for  the  United  States  an  engine  specially 
adapted  to  the  curves  of  American  railways,  and  named 
it  the  Bogie,  after  a  kind  of  low  wagon  used  on  the  quay 
at  Newcastle.  To  Robert  Stephenson  we  are  according- 
ly indebted  for  the  type  of  the  locomotive  engines  used 
in  both  hemispheres. 

The  next  great  work  upon  which  Mr.  Stephenson  was 
engaged  was  the  survey  and  construction  of  the  London 
and  Birmingham  Railway,  which  he  undertook  in  1833, 
having  already  been  employed  in  the  execution  of  a 
branch  from  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway,  and 
in  the  construction  of  the  Leicester  and  Swannington 
line.  The  London  and  Birmingham  line  was  completed 
in  four  years,  and  on  the  15th  of  September,  1838,  was 
opened.  The  difficulties  of  this  vast  undertaking  were 
very  formidable.  In  forming  the  Kilsby  Tunnel,  it  was 
ascertained  that  about  200  yar.ds  from  the  south  end 
there  existed,  overlaid  by  a  bed  of  clay  40  feet  thick,  a 
quicksand.  The  contractor  for  the  works  is  said  to  have 
died  of  fright  in  consequence  of  this  discovery ;  and  the 
danger  was  so  imminent,  that  the  tunnel  would  have 
been  abandoned  altogether  but  for  the  landholders  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  line.  Under  these  circumstances,  Robert 
Stephenson  accepted  the  responsibility  of  proceeding, 
and  in  the  end  conquered  every  difficulty.  He  worked 
with  amazing  energy,  walking  the  whole  distance  between 
London  and  Birmingham  more  than  twenty  times  in  the 
course  of  his  superintendence.  Meanwhile,  he  had  not 
ceased  to  devote  his  attention  to  the  manufactory  in 
Newcastle,  convinced  that  good  locomotives  are  the  first 
step  to  rapid  transit.  His  evidence  before  Parliamentary 
Committees  was  grasped  at ;  and  it  may  be  said  that,  in 
one  way  or  another,  he  became  engaged  on  all  the  rail- 
ways in  England,  while,  in  conjunction  with  his  father, 


419 

he  directed  the  execution  of  more  than  a  third  of  the 
various  lines  in  the  country.  Father  and  son  were  con- 
sulted as  to  the  Belgian  system  of  railways,  and  obtained 
from  King  Leopold  the  Cross  of  the  Order  of  Leopold  in 
1844.  For  similar  services  performed  in  Norway,  which 
he  visited  in  1846,  Robert  Stephenson  received  the  Grand 
Cross  of  St.  Olof.  So,  also,  he  assisted  either  in  actually 
making  or  in  laying  out  the  systems  of  lines  in  Switzer- 
land, in  Germany,  in  Denmark,  in  Tuscany,  in  Canada,  in 
Egypt,  and  in  India.  As  the  champion  of  locomotive  in 
opposition  to  stationary  engines,  he  resisted  to  the  utmost 
the  atmospheric  railway  system,  which  was  backed  with 
the  authority  of  Brunei,  but  it  is  now  nearly  forgotten. 
In  like  manner,  he  had  to  fight  with  Mr.  Brunei  the  bat- 
tle of  the  gauges,  the  narrow  against  the  broad  gauge, 
and  he  was  successful  also  here. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  Bridges  which  Robert  Stephen- 
son  erected  for  railway  purposes  that  his  genius  as  an 
engineer  is  most  strikingly  displayed,  and  by  these  he 
will  be  best  remembered.  Of  his  bridges,  we  refer  to 
the  high-level  one  at  Newcastle,  constructed  of  wood  and 
iron ;  to  the  Victoria  Bridge  at  Berwick,  built  of  stone 
and  brick ;  to  the  bridge  in  wrought  and  cast  iron  across 
the  Nile ;  to  the  Conway  and  the  Britannia  Bridges  over 
the  Menai  Straits  ;  and  to  the  Victoria  Bridge  over  the 
St.  Lawrence.  The  High-level  Bridge,  in  which  the 
suspension  and  ordinary  principles  of  a  viaduct  have  been 
combined  in  one  structure,  serves  a  two-fold  object — a 
bridge  to  accommodate  Newcastle  and  Gateshead  at  the 
same  time  that  it  carries  the  railway-lines  above. 

The  idea  of  the  Tubular  Bridge  was  an  utter  novelty,  and  as  .carried 
out  was  a  grand  achievement.  When,  in  1844,  Mr.  Kobert  Stephen- 
son  undertook  to  construct  a  railway  between  Chester  and  Holyhead, 
it  was  necessary  to  cross  the  Menai  Straits  from  the  main  land  to 
Holyhead  at  such  a  height  as  to  allow  great  ships  to  pass  beneath  it. 
The  Commissioners  of  the  Admiralty  would  not  consent  to  cast-iron 
arches,  and  the  principle  of  a  suspension  bridge  was  inadmissible.  Mr. 
Stephenson  then  proposed  to  span  the  strait  by  a  tunnel  of  wrought 
iron,  stretching  from  side  to  side,  and  allowing  a  passage  for  trains 
through  its  interior.  The  question  then  arose,  Should  the  tubular 
bridge  be  supported  by  chains,  or  left  to  itself?  what  should  be  the 
form  of  the  tube — elliptical,  circular,  or  rectangular  ?  where  was  the 
most  strength  required  ?  where  least  ?  and  how  could  the  greatest 
strength  be  secured  with  the  least  expenditure  of  materials  ?  These 


420  RAILWAY   TUBULAR   BRIDGES. 

points  were  determined  by  careful  experiments  by  Mr.  Stephenson, 
assisted  by  Mr.  Fairbairn,  the  ejninent  engineer ;  and  the  result  was, 
it  was  seriously  proposed  to  build  an  iron  box,  460  feet  long,  30  feet 
high,  and  14  feet  broad,  on  the  banks  of  the  Menai  Straits ;  to  float 
this  mass  of  1450  tons  at  high  water  to  openings  in  piers  prepared  for 
its  reception  ;  to  lift  it  upward  of  100  feet,  and  build  solid  masonry 
underneath  for  its  support ;  to  rest  it  at  its  utmost  height  on  cast-iron 
rollers,  which  would  allow  it  to  expand  and  contract  as  the  sun  rose 
and  set,  or  as  summer  advanced  and  waned  ;  then  to  make  it  a  tunnel 
for  the  passage  of  railway  trains  weighing,  perhaps,  a  hundred  tons. 
Experiments  made  Mr.  Fairbairn  confident  that  there  was  no  dan- 
ger of  the  bridge  giving  way  under  its  own  weight ;  and  numerous 
experiments  upon  a  large  scale  proved  the  truth  of  his  opinion. 
Chains  were  as  unnecessary  to  support  this  bridge  as  intermediate 
piers,  even  if  the  latter  could  have  been  built.  Its  strength  is  derived 
from  a  different  source  from  either.  The  roof  consists  of  two  plat- 
forms, 1  foot  9  inches  apart,  and  14  feet  broad ;  this  space  is  divided 
into  eight  equal  parts  by  partitions  running  from  end  to  end  of  the 
bridge,  and  the  cells  thus  formed  keep  the  tube  from  giving  way  to 
compression  in  the  top,  where  the  material  is  most  liable  to  be  injured. 

Two  of  these  stupendous  bridges  were  constructed  for  the  Chester 
and  Holyhead  line.  The  first  was  built  on  the  banks  of  the  Conway 
River  in  1848,  and  now  spans  that  stream  not  far  from  the  suspension 
bridge  erected  by  Telford  on  the  Holyhead  road  about  twenty  years 
earlier.  Two  tubes  of  400  feet  span  were  required,  one  for  each  line 
of  rails.  A  train  of  wagons,  weighing  altogether  301  tons,  was  placed 
in  the  middle  of  one  of  them,  and  the  deflection  in  the  centre  amount- 
ed to  11  inches.  The  rollers  on  which  the  bridge  rests  allow  the  tubes 
to  expand  or  contract  with  the  ever-varying  temperature  of  the  day 
or  season. 

The  Britannia  Bridge  over  the  Menai  Straits  (at  about  a  mile  dis- 
tant from  Telford's  suspension  bridge)  was  finished  a  year  after,  and 
is  justly  regarded  as  the  greatest  triumph  of  engineering  skill  that  this 
or  any  other  country  has  ever  witnessed.  A  splendid  tower  rises  to 
the  height  of  250  feet  from  a  rock  in  the  middle  of  the  Straits ;  and 
four  tubes,  each  472  feet  in  length,  stretch  from  it  to  smaller  towers 
on  the  banks.  Other  four  tubes,  of  260  feet  each,  carry  the  railway 
to  the  high  grounds  on  the  east  and  west  sides  of  the  Straits.  This 
magnificent  bridge  was  the  culminating  point  of  railway  enterprise 
and  engineering,  and  half  a  century  may  elapse  before  necessity  pro- 
duces its  rival. — JAMES  SIME,  M.A.;  Edinburgh  Essays,  1856. 

The  construction  of  this  bridge  was  a  vast  labor.  Any 
midway  support  was  limited  to  a  small  area  of  the  cen- 
tral rock ;  scaffolding  below  was  impracticable,  and  the 
navigation  was  under  no  circumstances  to  be  interfered 
with.  To  meet  these  requirements,  the  tubes  were  con- 
structed upon  the  beach,  and  floated  upon  rapid  tides; 
and,  although  weighing  nearly  2000  tons  each,  were 
ultimately  lifted  by  vast  hydraulic  presses  into  their 


THE   BRITANNIA    BKIDGE.  421 

place,  to  bear  Mr.  Stephenson's  name  with  honor  to 
posterity.  Each  of  the  tubes  has  been  compared  to  a 
row  of  chimneyless  houses,  and,  allowing  it  to  have  sky- 
lights in  the  roof,  it  would  resemble  the  Burlington  Ar- 
cade in  Piccadilly ;  and  the  labor  of  placing  each  tube 
upon  the  piers  has  been  likened  to  that  of  raising  Bur- 
lington Arcade  to  the  summit  of  the  spire  of  St.  James's 
Church,  if  surrounded  with  water.  One  of  the  tubes,  if 
placed  on  its  end  in  St.  Paul's  Church-yard,  would  reach 
107  feet  higher  than  the  cross  of  the  Cathedral.  The 
masonry  is  Cyclopean.  Mr.  Stephenson  tells  us  that  no 
less  than  a  million  and  a  half  of  cubic  feet,  of  which  the 
piers  and  abutments  are  composed,  were  constructed 
within  three  years;  and  three  cubic  feet  were  accom- 
plished per  minute  from  the  commencement. 

Over  the  entrances  to  the  tubes  are  massive  lintels,  consisting  of 
single  stones  twenty  feet  long ;  and  the  approaches  are  marked  by  co- 
lossal lions  couchant  on  pedestals,  designed  by  Mr.  John  Thomas,  and 
each  composed  of  eleven  pieces  of  limestone :  they  are  each  twenty- 
five  feet  long,  twelve  feet  high,  and  weigh  about  thirty  tons ;  and  one 
of  these  lions  was  brought  from  a  workshop  at  the  base  of  the  abut- 
ment, raised  100  feet,  and  put  together  complete  on  the  pedestal  in  a 
single  day.  . 

The  Britannia  Tower  is  221  feet  3  inches  high  ;  it  contains  151,158 
tubic  feet  of  Anglesea  limestone,  127,001  cubic  feet  of  Runcorn  sand- 
stone, and  68,411  cubic  feet  of  brick- work,  in  all  weighing  24,700 
tons.  Including  the  bed-plates,  it  contains  also  479  tons  of  cast-iron, 
and  the  weight  from  the  two  tubes  is  4000  tons.  The  total  weight 
at  the  foundations  is  thus  29,600  tons,  or  16  tons  per  superficial  foot 
of  sectional  area  ;  whereas  the  weight  required  to  crush  the  lower 
courses  would  be  about  500  tons  per  superficial  foot. 

The  security  which  Mr.  Stephenson  deemed  it  neces- 
sary to  insure  for  the  public  in  this  wonderful  structure 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  following  very  extraordinary 
fact.  It  had  been  mathematically  demonstrated,  as  well 
as  practically  proved  by  Mr.  Fairbairn,  that  the  strain 
which  would  be  inflicted  on  the  iron-work  of  the  longest 
of  Mr.  Stephenson's  aerial  galleries,  by  a  monster  railway- 
train  sufficient  to  cover  it  from  end  to  end,  would  amount 
to  six  tons  per  square  inch,  which  is  exactly  equal  to  the 
constant  stress  upon  the  chains  of  Telford's  Menai  Bridge 
when  it  has  nothing  to  support  but  its  own  apparently 
slender  weight. 

The  two  tubular  bridges  constructed  by  Mr.  Stephen- 


422  VICTORIA    BRIDGE,   CANADA. 

son  on  the  Egyptian  railway  are,  one  over  the  Damietta 
branch  of  the  Nile,  and  the  other  over  the  large  canal 
near  Beaket-al-Saba ;  they  have  this  peculiarity,  that  the 
trains  run,  not,  as  at  the  Menai  Straits,  within  the  tube, 
but  at  the  outside,  upon  the  top. 

Although  the  Britannia  Bridge  represented  the  most 
scientific  distribution  of  material  which  could  be  devised 
at  the  date  of  its  construction,  it  has  since  been  improved 
upon  by  the  same  engineer  in  the  Victoria  Bridge  now 
in  the  course  of  construction  across  the  river  St.  Law- 
rence, near  Montreal.  The  Victoria  Bridge  is,  without 
exception,  for  gigantic  proportions  and  vast  length  and 
strength,  the  greatest  work  of  the  kind  in  ancient  or 
modern  times.  The  entire*  bridge,  with  its  approaches, 
is  only  sixty  yards  short  of  two  miles ;  it  is  five  times 
longer  than  the  Britannia  Bridge,  and  has  twenty-four 
spans  of  242  feet  each,  and  one  great  central  span — itself 
an  immense  bridge,  of  330  feet.  The  road  is  carried 
within  iron  tubes,  sixty  feet  above  the  level  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  which  runs  beneath  at  a  speed  of  about  ten 
miles  an  hour,  and  in  winter  brings  down  the  ice  of  2000 
miles  of  lakes  and  upper  rivers.  The  weight  of  iron  in  the 
tubes  will  be  upward  of  10,000  tons,  supported  on  mass- 
ive stone  piers.  This  gigantic  work  is  upon  the  Grand 
Trunk  Railway  of  Canada,  which  will  be  upward  of  1100 
miles  in  length. 

Mr.  Stephenson's  labors  were  not  confined  to  the  con- 
struction and  survey  of  railways.  He  made  elaborate 
reports  on  the  London  and  Liverpool  system  of  Water- 
works ;  he  considerably  aided  with  his  counsel  and  ex- 
perience his  friend  Sir  Joseph  Paxton  in  his  design  for 
the  Great  Exhibition  Building  in  Hyde  Park ;  and  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Royal  Commission.  In  1847  Mr. 
Stephenson  was  returned  to  Parliament  for  Whitby,  in 
the  Conservative  interest,  which  he  continued  to  repre- 
sent until  his  death.  His  opinion  upon  scientific  subjects 
was  often  sought  by  the  House :  this  he  gave  impartially 
and  with  the  modesty  of  true  genius,  and  his  information 
was  exact.  He  took  great  interest  in  all  scientific  inves- 
tigations. He  was  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  and 
of  other  scientific  institutions. 

In  1856,  when  Mr.  Piazzi  Smyth  was  sent  out,  with 


THE    CIVIL    ENGINEER.  423 

very  limited  means,  on  an  astronomical  expedition  to 
Teneriffe,  Mr.  Stephenson,  with  a  liberality  and  zeal  for 
research  worthy  of  the  name  he  bore,  placed  at  Mr. 
Smyth's  disposal,  for  as  long  a  time  as  the  object  he  had 
in  view  might  require,  his  yacht  Titania,  a  finely-mould- 
vessel  of  the  new  school,  of  140  tons  burden,  and  manned 
with  a  picked  crew  of  sixteen  able  seamen.  As  our  ob- 
server went  out  and  returned  in  this  vessel,  Mr.  Stephen- 
son  must  have  abandoned  its  use  for  the  whole  summer 
and  autumn ;  or,  rather,  as  we  have  no  doubt,  he  felt 
glad  to  find  that  an  opportunity  had  occurred  for  en- 
abling him  to  employ  it  so  well.* 

In  the  same  spirit,  in  1855,  he  paid  off  a  large  debt 
which  the  Newcastle  Literary  and  Philosophical  Society 
had  incurred ;  his  motive  being,  to  use  his  own  phrase, 
gratitude  for  the  benefits  which  he  himself  had  received 
from  it  in  early  life,  and  a  hope  that  other  young  men 
might  find  it  equally  useful.  And  in  1858  he  had  taken 
down  the  cottage  in  which  he  was  born  at  Willington, 
and  erected  upon  its  site  a  group  of  schools  for  girls, 
boys,  and  infants,  a  mechanics'  institute,  etc.,  at  the  cost 
of  two  thousand  pounds. 

As  a  member  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers,  Mr. 
Stephenson's  services  were  of  the  highest  value ;  never 
had  the  council  a  more  efficient  confrere.  As  President 
in  1855-56,  he  presented  an  address,  in  which  he  applied 
himself  with  striking  ability  to  the  great  question  of 
British  Railways.  The  data  of  this  address  are  very  im- 
portant. 

"Parliamentary  legislation  for  railways,"  said  the  President,  "is 
full  of  incongruities  and  absurdities.  The  Acts  of  Parliament  which 
railways  have  been  forced  to  obtain  cost  the  country  £14,000,000  ster- 
ling, the  exclusive  funds  of  Parliament,  and  of  the  system  it  enforced. 
The  legislation  of  Parliament  has  made  railways  pay  £70,000,000  of 
money  to  landowners  for  land  and  property,  yet  almost  every  estate 
traversed  by  a  railway  has  greatly  improved  in  value." 

Referring  to  the  benefits  derived  from  the  Institution,  Mr.  Stephen- 
son  observed  that  "it  is  the  arena  wherein  have  been  exhibited  that 
intelligence  and  familiar  knowledge  of  abstract  and  practical  science 
characterizing  the  papers  and  discussions.  In  consequence  of  the  con- 
stant intercourse  within  its  walls,  professional  rivalry  and  competition 
are  now  conducted  with  feelings  of  mutual  forbearance  and  concilia- 

*  National  Review,  No.  18. 


424  DEATH    OF    ROBERT    STEPHENSON. 

tion,  and  the  efforts  of  the  members  are  all  directed  in  the  path  of 
enterprise,  and  toward  the  fair  reward  of  successful  skill.  The  busi- 
ness of  the  civil  engineer,  from  a  craft,  has  become  a  profession ;  and, 
by  union  and  professional  uprightness,  a  great  field  is  opened  to 
energy  and  knowledge." 

In  conclusion,  Mr.  Stephenson  urged  the  duty  devolv- 
ing on  civil  engineers  of  improving  and  perfecting  the 
vast  railway  system,  with  which  his  name,  in  consequence 
of  his  father's  works,  had  been  largely  associated. 

In  the  autumn  of  1859,  two  months  before  he  had 
reached  his  fifty-sixth  year,  Mr.  Stephenson  was  struck 
down  by  death,  in  the  maturity  of  his  intellectual  powers. 
His  health  is  stated  to  have  been  impaired  by  the  fatigues 
of  his  great  work,  the  Britannia  Bridge.  He  complained 
of  failing  strength  just  before  his  last  journey  to  Norway. 
In  Norway  he  became  very  unwell:  his  liver  was  so 
much  affected  that  he  hurried  home;  and  when  he 
arrived  at  Lowestoft,  he  was  so  weak  that  he  had  to  be 
carried  from  his  .yacht  to  the  railway,  and  thence  to  his 
residence  in  London,  where  his  malady  increased  so 
rapidly  as  to  leave  from  the  first  but  faint  hopes  of  his 
recovery.  He  had  not  strength  enough  to  resist  the 
disease,  and  he  gradually  sank,  until  at  length  he  expired 
on  October  12.  He  was  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
on  October  21,  in  the  nave,  next  to  Telford,  the  cele- 
brated engineer  of  his  day.  Men  of  kindred  genius  and 
engaged  in  kindred  enterprises,  they  lie  at  last  side  by 
side.  Stephenson  was  wont  to  say  that,  had  Telford 
been  buried  in  some  quiet  country  church-yard,  he  should 
have  wished  his  remains  to  be  interred  along  with  him 
there ;  but,  since  he  lay  in  Westminster  Abbey,  that 
was  an  idle  wish. 

Mr.  Stephenson's  remains  were  followed  to  the  grave 
by  his  immediate  relatives  and  friends,  but  the  presence 
also  of  nearly  two  thousand  persons  at  the  interment 
gave  the  ceremony  more  of  the  character  of  a  public 
than  a  private  funeral.  Among  the  spectators  was  a 
working-man  from  the  South-eastern  Railway,  who  many 
years  ago  drove  the  first  locomotive  engine,  called  "the 
Harvey  Combe,"  that  ran  from  London  to  Birmingham, 
Robert  Stephenson  standing  at  'his  elbow  all  the  way. 
Westminster  Abbey,  as  a  place  of  sepulture,  is  commonly 


HIS    CHARACTER.  425 

thought  to  have  been  reserved  for  sovereigns,  warriors, 
and  statesmen;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  here 
also  rest  many  of  our  poets,  and  men  of  art  and  letters. 
The  profession  of  an  engineer  almost  belongs  to  our  age ; 
and  Robert  Stephenson,  though  neither  warrior  nor  states- 
man, was  not  the  less,  if  indeed  not  the  more,  a  public 
benefactor  in  his  many  gigantic  works.  He  was  as  good 
as  he  was  great,  and  the  man  was  even  more  to  be  ad- 
mired than  the  engineer.  His  benevolence  was  unbound- 
ed, and  every  year  he  expended  thousands  in  doing  good 
unseen.  His  chief  care  in  this  way  was  for  the  children 
of  old  friends  who  had  been  kind  to  him  in  early  life, 
sending  them  to  the  best  schools,  and  providing  for  them 
with  characteristic  generosity.  His  own  pupils  regarded 
him  with  a  sort  of  worship ;  and  the  number  of  men  be- 
longing to  the  Stephenson  school  who  have  taken  very 
high  rank  in  their  peculiar  walk  shows  how  successful 
he  was  in  his  system  of  training,  and  how  strong  was 
the  force  of  his  example.  Mr.  Stephenson  bequeathed 
by  his  will  a  large  sum  to  various  public  institutions, 
located  chiefly  in  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  in  the  vicinity 
of  which  he  was  born,  and  with  which  his  life  was  so 
closely  identified. 

To  conclude.  Neither  the  originator  of  the  Railway 
System,  nor  his  son  and  coadjutor,  were,  in  their  day, 
honored  with  any  national  distinction  in  their  own  coun- 
try, but  their  memory  will  live  for  ages  in  the  hearts  of  a 
grateful  people. 


ISAMBAKD  KINGDOM  BRUNEL:  RAILWAY 
WORKS  AND  IRON  SHIP-BUILDING. 

ISAMBARD  KINGDOM  BRUNEL,  the  only  son  of  Sir  Isam- 
bard  Mark  Brunei  (of  whom  see  sketch,  p.  396-401),  was 
born  at  Portsmouth  in  1806.  He  was  educated  at  the 
College  of  Henri  Quatre  at  Caen.  As  Normandy  was  the 
birthplace  of  both  his  parents,  his  mother  being  a  Miss 
Kingdom,  of  Rouen,  this  choice  of  a  school  is  easily  ex- 
plained. He  was,  as  it  were,  born  an  engineer,  about 
the  time  his  father  had  completed  the  Block  Machinery 
at  Portsmouth.  Those  who  recollect  him  as  a  boy  re- 
member full  well  how  rapidly,  almost  intuitively,  indeed, 
he  entered  into  and  identified  himself  with  all  his  father's 
plans  and  pursuits.  He  was  very  early  distinguished  for 
his  powers  of  mental  calculation,  and  for  his  rapidity  and 
accuracy  as  a  draughtsman.  His  power  in  this  respect 
was  not  confined  to  professional  or  mechanical  drawings 
only :  he  displayed  an  artist-like  feeling  for  and  a  love  of 
art,  which  in  later  days  never  deserted  him. 

The  bent  of  his  mind  when  young  was  clearly  seen  by 
his  father  and  by  all  who  knew  him.  His  education  was 
therefore  directed  to  qualify  him  for  that  profession  in 
which  he  afterward  distinguished  himself.  When  he 
was  about  fourteen  he  was  sent  to  Paris,  where  he  was 
placed  under  the  care  of  M.  Masson,  previous  to  entering 
the  college  of  Henri  Quatre  at  Caen,  where  he  remain- 
ed two  years.  He  then  returned  to  England,  and  com- 
menced his  professional  career  as  his  father's  assistant  in 
the  Thames-Tunnel  works.  There  are  many  of  his  fellow- 
laborers  now  living  who  well  remember  the  energy  and 
ability  he  displayed  in  that  great  scientific  struggle  against 
physical  difficulties  and  obstacles  of  no  ordinary  magni- 
tude, and  it  may  be  said  that  at  this  time  the  anxiety 
and  fatigue  he  underwent,  and  an  accident  he  met  with, 
laid  the  foundation  of  future  weakness  and  .illness.  In 


BRUNEL'S  FIRST  WORKS.  427 

one  of  the  irruptions  the  rush  of  the  water  carried  him 
up  the  shaft.* 

Upon  this  and  a  similarly  trying  occasion,  he  showed 
that  zeal  for  his  profession  which  characterized  him  to 
his  dying  day.  Being  an  expert  swimmer,  he  is  known 
to  have  saved  the  lives  of  several  of  the  workmen  at  the 
risk  of  his  own.  An  eye-witness  describes,  while  the 
tears  ran  down  his  cheeks,  how  the  young  man,  still  suf- 
fering from  exposure  and  fatigue,  paid  a  visit  to  the  works 
during  the  men's  dinner-hour.  As  soon  as  he  appeared, 
they  welcomed  him  with  a  hearty  and  respectful  cheer. 
They  crowded  round  him,  stern,  rugged  men  weeping 
like  children,  as  they  affectionately  grasped  his  hand. 
While  the  wives  of  the  men  he  had  saved  fell  on  their 
knees  before  him,  imploring  blessings  upon  him,  others 
cut  little  pieces  from  his  coat,  which  they  long  treasured 
as  relics.f 

Brunei  displayed  very  early  the  resources  not  only  of 
a  trained  and  educated  mind,  but  great,  original,  and  in- 
ventive power.  He  possessed  the  advantage  of  being 
able  to  express  or  draw  clearly  and  accurately  whatever 
he  had  matured  in  his  own  mind.  But  not  only  that : 
he  could  work  out  with  his  own  hands,  if  he  pleased,  the 
models  of  his  own  designs,  whether  in  wood  or  iron.  As 
a  mere  workman  he  would  have  excelled.  Even  at  this 
early  period  Steam  Navigation  may  be  said  to  have 
occupied  his  mind,  for  he  made  the  model  of  a  boat,  and 
worked  it  with  locomotive  contrivances  of  his  own. 
Every  thing  he  did,  he  did  with  all  his  might  and 
strength,  and  he  did  it  well :  the  same  energy,  thought- 
fulness,  and  accuracy,  the  same  thorough  conception  and 
mastery  of  whatever  he  undertook,  distinguished  him  in 
all  minor  things. 

Upon  the  stoppage  of  the  Thames-Tunnel  works  by 
the  irruption  of  the  river,  Mr.  Brunei  became  employed 
on  his  own  account  upon  various  works.  Docks  at  Sun- 
derland  and  Bristol  were  constructed  by  him ;  and  when 
it  was  proposed  to  throw  a  suspension  bridge  across  the 
Avon  at  Clifton,  his  design  and  plan  was  approved  by 

*  See  page  400.     Mr.  Brunei's  improved  use  of  the  Diving-Bell, 
after  one  of  the  Thames-Tunnel  irruptions,  is  noticed  at  pages  60-61. 
t  Atlas  journal,  1859. 


428 

Mr.  Telford.  This  work  was  never  completed :  he  thus 
became  known,  however,  in  Bristol ;  and  when  a  railway 
was  in  contemplation  between  London  and  Bristol,  and 
a  company  formed,  Brunei  was  appointed  their  engineer. 
His  earliest  works  were  on  the  Bristol  and  Gloucester- 
shire and  the  Merthyr  and  Cardiff  tram-ways,  in  which 
works  his  mind  was  first  turned  to  the  construction  of 
railways ;  and  when  he  became  engineer  of  the  Great 
Western  Railway  Company,  he  recommended  and  intro- 
duced what  is  popularly  called  the  Broad  Gauge.  Con- 
sidering this  line  as  an  engineering  work  alone,  it  may 
challenge  comparison  with  any  other  railway  in  the 
world  for  the  speed  and  ease  of  traveling  upon  it,  al- 
though the  Narrow  Gauge  is  more  economical  in  work- 
ing. Among  the  Great  Western  structures  are  the  via- 
duct at  Hanwell;  the  Maidenhead  Bridge,  w^hich  has 
the  flattest  arch  of  such  large  dimensions  ever  attempted 
in  brick-work ;  the  Box  Tunnel,  which,  at  the  date  of  its 
construction,  was  the  longest  in  the  world;  and  the 
bridges  and  tunnels  between  Bath  and  Bristol,  all  more 
or  less  remarkable  and  original  works.  To  these  may 
be  added  the  sea-wall  of  the  South  Devon  Railway ;  and, 
above  all,  the  tubular  bridge  over  the  Tamar,  together 
with  the  similar  bridge  over  the  Wye  at  Chepstow.* 
On  the  South  Devon  Railway,  Brunei  adopted  the  plan 
which  had  been  previously  tried  on  the  London  and 
Croydon  line,  viz.,  of  propelling  the  carriages  by  atmos- 
pheric pressure.  The  plan  failed,  but  he  entertained  a 
strong  opinion  that  this  power  would  be  found  hereafter 
capable  of  adoption  for  locomotive  purposes.  It  was  in 
connection  with  the  interests  of  the  Great  Western  Rail- 
way that  he  first  conceived  the  idea  of  building  a  steam- 

*  These  bridges  are  imposing  monuments  of  Mr.  Brunei's  boldness 
and  skill.  The  principle  upon  which  the  bridges  in  question  were 
planned  has  been  much  criticised,  but  the  works  as  executed  undoubt- 
edly possess  great  strength  and  durability.  The  foundations  of  these 
bridges,  under  the  customary  modes  adopted  with  such  works,  would 
have  been  extremely  difficult  of  execution ;  but  Mr.  Brunei's  ready 
appreciation  of  the  merits  of  new  discoveries  enabled  him  to  take  full 
advantage  of  the  pneumatic  process,  by  a  modification  of  which  he 
established  the  foundations  of  the  principal  pier  of  the  Saltash  Bridge 
at  a  depth  of  water  and  soft  mud  at  which  no  works  of  the  kind  hac! 
been  previously  founded. —  The  Engineer.  No.  195. 


IKON   SHIP-BUILDING.  429 

ship  to  run  between  England  and  America.  The  Great 
Western  was  built  accordingly.  The  power  and  tonnage 
of  this  vessel  was  about  double  that  of  the  largest  ship 
afloat  at  the  time  of  her  construction.  Subsequently  the 
Great  Britain  was  designed  and  built  under  Mr.  Brunei's 
superintendence.  This  ship,  the  result,  as  regards  mag- 
nitude, of  a  few  years'  experience  in  iron  ship-build- 
ing, was  not  only  more  than  double  the  tonnage  of  the 
Great  Western,  and  by  far  the  largest  ship  in  existence, 
but  she  was  more  than  twice  as  large  as  the  Great 
Northern,  the  largest  iron  ship  which  at  that  time  had 
been  attempted.  While  others  hesitated  about  extend- 
ing the  use  of  iron  in  the  construction  of  ships,  Mr. 
Brunei  saw  that  it  was  the  only  material  in  which  a  very 
great  increase  of  dimensions  could  safely  be  attempted. 
The  very  accident  which  befell  the  Great  Britain  upon 
the  rocks  in  Dundrum  Bay  showed  conclusively  the  skill 
he  had  then  attained  in  the  adaptation  of  iron  to  the 
purposes  of  ship-building.  The  means  taken,  under  his 
immediate  direction,  to  protect  the  vessel  from  the  injury 
of  winds  and  waves,  attracted  at  the  time  much  atten- 
tion, and  they  proved  successful,  for  the  vessel  was  again 
floated,  and  is  still  afloat. 

While  noticing  these  great  efforts  to  improve  the  art 
of  ship-building  at  this  date,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  Mr.  Brunei  was  the  first  man  of  eminence  in  his 
profession  who  perceived  the  capabilities  of  the  screw  as 
a  propeller.  From  his  experiments  on  a  small  scale  in 
the  Archimedes,  he  saw  his  way  clearly  to  the  introduc- 
tion of  that  method  of  propulsion  which  he  afterward 
adopted  in  the  Great  Britain.  He  next  submitted 
it  to  the  Admiralty,  and  succeeded  in  persuading  the 
Board  to  give  it  a  trial  in  her  majesty's  navy,  under  his 
direction.  In  the  progress  of  this  trial  Brunei  was 
much  thwarted ;  but  the  Rattler,  the  ship  which  was  at 
length  placed  at  his  disposal,  and  fitted  with  engines 
and  screw  by  Messrs.  Maudslay  and  Field,  gave  results 
which  justified  his  expectations  under  somewhat  adverse 
circumstances.  She  was  the  first  screw  ship  which  the 
British  navy  possessed,  and  her  satisfactory  performances 
led  to  numerous  others  being  added. 

The  Bute  Docks  at  Cardiff,  and  the  North  Dock  at 


430  THE  "GKEAT  EASTERN." 

Sunderland,  were  Brunei's  work,  as  was  also  the  elegant 
Hungerford  Suspension  Bridge  across  the  Thames.  To 
his  care,  in  1850,  was  intrusted  the  Tuscan  portion  of  the 
Sardinian  railway.  During  the  Russian  war  he  was  call- 
ed upon  to  fit  up  the  Renikoi  hospitals  on  the  Darda- 
nelles :  he  laid  on  a  special  supply  of  water  from  the  ad- 
jacent hills,  and  constructed  short  lines  of  railway,  with 
easy  carriages,  to  facilitate  the  removal  of  the  wounded 
from  the  landing-place  to  the  different  wards. 

We  now  approach  Mr.  Brunei's  most  stupendous  work, 
and  which,  without  querulous  remark,  must  be  consider- 
ed to  have  shortened  his  valuable  life.  Prepared  by  ex- 
perience and  much  personal  devotion  to  the  subject  of 
Steam  Navigation  by  means  of  large  ships,  he,  in  the  lat- 
ter part  of  1851,  began  to  work  out  the  idea  he  had  long 
entertained — that  to  make  long  voyages  economically 
and  speedily  by  steam,  required  that  the  vessels  should 
be  large  enough  to  carry  the  coal  for  the  entire  voyage 
outward,  and,  unless  the  facilities  for  obtaining  coal  were 
very  great  at  the  outport,  for  the  return  voyage  also ; 
and  that  vessels  much  larger  than  any  then  built  could 
be  navigated  with  great  advantages  from  the  mere  effects 
of  size.  Hence  originated  the  Great  Eastern. 

The  mere  idea  of  a  ship  of  a  capacity  six  or  eight  times  that  of  any 
thing  afloat  had  doubtless  occurred  to  many  an  enthusiastic  schemer, 
for  the  sentiment  of  magnitude  and  immensity  is  innate  in  all  in  whose 
character  imagination  is  an  element ;  but  Mr.  Brunei  gave  shape  to 
his  idea  by  preparing  plans  and  otherwise  convincing  himself  of  its 
practicability.  As  an  example  of  naval  construction,  the  Great  East- 
ern is  unquestionably  the  work  of  Mr.  Scott  Russell,  every  way  as 
much  so  as  were  the  Great  Western  and  Great  Britain  the  works  of 
Mr.  Patterson,  of  Bristol.  Yet  Mr.  Brunei's  services  were  of  hardly 
less  importance ;  and  every  one  at  all  conversant  with  the  organiza- 
tion of  an  establishment  devoted  to  the  construction  of  steam-vessels 
is  aware  that  the  duties  of  the  naval  architect  and  builder,  and  those 
of  the  engineer,  are  each  clearly  defined  and  in  no  way  conflicting. 
Certain  it  is  that,  whether  the  Great  Eastern  prove  successful  or  other- 
wise, Mr.  Brunei's  name  will  be  indelibly  associated  with  her  history 
as  long  as  that  shall  survive. — The  Engineer,  No.  195. 

The  success  of  this  great  work,  in  a  practical  point  of 
view,  is  admitted,  as  well  as  the  strength  and  stability  of 
the  construction  of  the  vessel.  The  difficulties  attendant 
on  the  launching  of  the  ship  in  1858  at  one  time  seemed 
insurmountable.  To  a  friend,  who  despondingly  express- 
ed his  fears  that  the  huge  ship  would  never  reach  the 


DEATH    OF    I.   K.   BKUNEL.  431 

•water,  Brunei  quietly  replied,  "  Oh,  she  shall  move — she 
must !"  He  never  for  a  moment  despaired  of  success. 
His  health,  however,  had  been  undermined  by  these  great 
exertions,  and  his  death  was  hastened  by  the  fatigue  and 
mental  strain  caused  by  his  efforts  to  superintend  the 
completion  of  the  great  ship.  We  must  not  forbear  to 
mention  that  for  several  years  past  Mr.  Brunei  had  been 
suffering  from  ill  health,  brought  on  by  over-exertion. 
Nevertheless,  he  allowed  himself  no  relaxation  from  his 
professional  labors ;  and  it  was  during  the  period  of  bodi- 
ly pain  and  weakness  that  his  greatest  difficulties  were 
surmounted  and  some  of  his  greatest  works  achieved. 

By  his  death  one  more  name  has  been  added  to  the 
list  of  those  who  have  been  stricken  down  when  their 
hopes  were  highest  and  victory  within  their  grasp.  By 
a  coincidence,  as  it  would  appear,  Mr.  Brunei  went  on 
board  the  great  ship  for  the  last  time  on  the  first  day 
when  it  could  be  said  she  was  ready  for  sea.  If  not  so 
in  every  detail,  she  was,  as  a  whole,  essentially  com- 
pleted, although  still  untried.  On  that  day,  the  5th  of 
September,  Mr.  Brunei  suffered  an  attack  of  paralysis, 
from  which  he  never  recovered.  He  sank  until  the  even- 
ing of  the  15th  of  September,  when  he  passed  away,  still 
young,  and  upon  the  completion  of  the  greatest  work  of 
his  life. 

Mr.  Brunei  died  in  his  paternal  house  at  Westminster. 
He  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  having  been  elect- 
ed at  the  early  age  of  twenty-six.  In  1857  he  was  ad- 
mitted by  the  University  of  Oxford  to  the  honorary  de- 
gree of  Doctor  of  Civil  Laws.  He  had  filled  the  office 
of  Vice-President  of  the  Royal  Society ;  he  was  Vice- 
President  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers,  and  of 
the  Society  of  Arts ;  a  Fellow  of  the  Astronomical,  Ge- 
ographical, and  Geological  Societies,  and  a  Chevalier  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor.  But  he  had  received  no  distinc- 
tion from  his  own  country — not  even  the  knightly  honor 
which  his  father  bore.  Yet  he  lived  and  died  with  a 
scientific  reputation  bounded  only  by  the  limits  of  the 
civilized  world.  He  has  left  too  many  monuments  of  him- 
self, raised  both  on  land  and  sea,  to  permit  of  his  being 
soon  forgotten.  It  would  be  difficult  to  go  far  without 
finding  something  to  recall  the  memory  of  Isambard 
Kingdom  Brunei. 


PHOTOGKAPHY  AND  THE  STEREOSCOPE. 

''With  one  touch  virtuous 
Th1  arch-chemic  sun,  so  far  from  us  remote, 
Produces."  MTLTON'S  Paradise  Lost,  b.  iii. 

IF  evidence  were  needed  to  show  by  what  slow  and 
gradual  means  the  germs  of  great  discoveries  have  been 
reared  through  a  long  lapse  of  years  into  full  develop- 
ment, it  might  be  found  in  the  progress  of  Photography, 
since  it  has  been  the  work  of  half  a  century  of  French, 
English,  and  German  researches  to  suggest,  apply,  and 
finally  develop  the  existence  of  the  photographic  element. 
The  whole  art,  in  all  its  varieties,  rests  upon  the  fact  of 
the  blackening  effects  of  light  upon  certain  substances, 
and  chiefly  upon  silver,  on  which  it  acts  with  a  decom- 
posing power.  The  silver  being  dissolved  in  a  strong- 
acid,  surfaces  steeped  in  the  solution  become  incrusted 
with  minute  particles  of  the  metal,  which  in  this  state 
are  darkened  with  increased  rapidity.  These  facts  were 
first  ascertained  and  recorded,  as  regards  silver  combined 
with  chlorine,  in  1777,  by  Scheele,  a  native  of  Pomerania ; 
and  in  1801,  in  connection  with  nitrate  of  silver,  by  Hit- 
ter, of  Jena.  Here,  therefore,  were  the  raw  materials  for 
the  unknown  art.  A  very  short  time  after  Ritter's  re- 
sults, Dr.  Wollaston  made  the  same  experiments,  without 
having  been  informed  what  had  been  done  on  the  Conti- 
nent. This  coincidence  was,  however,  succeeded  by  the 
contemporary  labors  of  three  eminent  experimenters.  In 
conjunction  with  Mr.  Thomas  Wedgwood  (the  brother 
of  Josiah),  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  before  June,  1802,  suc- 
ceeded, by  means  of  a  camera-obscura,  in  obtaining  im- 
ages upon  paper,  or  white  leather,  prepared  with  nitrate 
of  silver,  by  placing  it  behind  a  painting  on  glass  exposed 
to  the  solar  light,  when  the  rays  transmitted  through 
the  differently-painted  surfaces  produced  distinct  tints 
of  brown  and  black,  differing  in  intensity  according  to 
the  shades  of  the  picture ;  and,  where  the  light  was  un- 
altered, the  color  became  deepest.  Thus  was  the  first 


433 

stain  designedly  traced  upon  the  prepared  substance. 
Mr.  Wedgwood,  by  this  method,  took  profiles  or  shadows 
of  figures,  and  delineated  the  woody  fibres  of  leaves,  the 
delicate  patterns  of  lace,  and  the  beautiful  wings  of  in- 
sects. But  the  charm,  once  set  agoing,  refused  to  stop ; 
the  slightest  exposure  to  light  .continued  the  action,  and 
the  image  was  lost  in  the  darkening  of  the  whole  paper. 
In  short,  there  was  wanting  the  next  secret  of 'fixing  the 
images.  The  process  seems,  therefore,  to  have  excited 
very  little  notice,  and  the  experiment  was  left  to  be  tak- 
en up  by  others,  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  prophetically  ob- 
serving, "  Nothing  but  a  method  of  preventing  the  un- 
shaded parts  of  the  delineation  from  being  colored  by 
the  exposure  to  the  day  is  wanted  to  render  this  process 
as  useful  as  it  is  elegant." 

The  third  worker  then  in  the  field  was  Dr.  Thomas 
Young.  In  1802,  when  Mr.  Wedgwood  was  "making 
profiles  by  the  agency  of  light,"  and  Sir  Humphrey  Davy 
was  "  copying  on  prepared  paper  the  images  of  small 
objects  produced  by  means  of  the  solar  microscope,"  Dr. 
Young  was  taking  photographs,  upon  paper  dipped  in  a 
solution  of  nitrate  of  silver,  of  the  colored  rings  observed 
by  Newton ;  and  his  experiment  clearly  proved  that  the 
agent  was  not  the  luminous  rays  in  the  sun's  light,  but 
the  invisible  or  chemical  rays  beyond  the  violet.  This 
result  is  described  in  the  Bakerian  Lecture  for  1803. 

Meanwhile,  in  1803,  Dr.  Wollaston  proved  the  action 
of  light  upon  gum  guiacum,  and  in  due  time  another  ex- 
perimenter entered  the  field,  who  availed  himself  of  this 
class  of  materials.  M.  Nicephorus  Niepce,  a  French  gen- 
tleman of  private  fortune,  who  lived  at  Chalons-sur-Saone, 
and  pursued  chemistry  for  his  pleasure — probably  unac- 
quainted with  the  labors  of  Davy  and  Wedgwood — like 
them,  made  use  of  the  camera  to  cast  his  images ;  but 
the  substance  on  which  he  received  them  was  a  polished 
plate  of  pewter,  coated  with  a  thin  bituminous  surface. 
He  gained  the  important  step  of  rendering  his  images 
permanent,  which  he  was  ten  years  in  attaining,  from 
1814  to  1824.  His  pictures,  on  issuing  from  the  camera, 
were  invisible  to  the  eye,  and  only  disengaged  by  the 
application  of  a  solvent,  which  removed  those  shaded 
parts  unhardened  by  the  action  of  the  light.  Nor  did 

T 


434  THE   DAGUEKKEOTYPE. 

they  present  the  usual  reversal  of  the  position  of  light  and 
shade  known  as  a  negative  appearance,  but,  whether  tak- 
en from  nature  or  from  an  engraving,  were  identical  in 
effect,  or  what  is  called  positive.  Nevertheless,  Niepce's 
process  was  difficult,  capricious,  and  tedious,  and  he  nev- 
er obtained  an  image  from  nature  in  less  than  from  seven 
to  twelve  hours,  so  that  the  changes  in  lights  and  shad- 
ows necessarily  rendered  it  imperfect.  He  therefore  de- 
voted his  discovery  mostly  to  copying  engravings,  and 
converted  his  plate,  by  means  of  an  acid,  into  a  surface 
for  ordinary  printing,  as  impressions  still  show. 

Niepce  seems  to  have  obtained  no  definite  results; 
but,  foreseeing  the  value  of  his  art,  he  went  to  England 
in  1827,  and  settled  at  Kew.  He  then  drew  up  a  short 
memorial,  which  he  forwarded,  with  specimens,  to  the 
hands  of  George  IV. ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  year  Niepce 
submitted  to  the  Royal  Society  a  paper  on  his  experi- 
ments, with  several  sketches  on  metal,  of  which  commu- 
nication the  Society  took  no  notice,  it  being  their  rule 
not  to  entertain  a  discovery  which  involved  a  secret. 
M.  Niepce,  therefore,  returned  to  his  own  country,  so 
chilled  by  the  English  indifference  that,  but  for  an  acci- 
dental circumstance,  he  would  not  have  proceeded  far- 
ther. However,  an  optician  having  indiscreetly  revealed 
to  Niepce  the  secret  that  M.  Daguerre,*  the  dioramic 

*  Louis  JACQUES  MAUDE  DAGUERRE,  who  had  long  been  known  in 
England  as  one  of  the  artists  of  the  Dioramic  Exhibition  in  the  Re- 
gent's Park,  died  in  Paris,  January  10,  1851,  in  his  sixty-second  year. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  French  Academy  and  of  the  Academy  of  St. 
Luke's ;  and  many  of  his  pictures  are  highly  valued  by  his  country- 
men. It  appears  that  the  experiments  which  led  to  the  discovery  of 
the  Daguerreotype  were  made  by  Daguerre  while  investigating  the 
chemical  changes  produced  by  the  solar  radiations,  in  the  hope  of  ap- 
plying these  phenomena  to  the  production  of  peculiar  effects  in  his 
dioramic  paintings :  such  is  the  relationship  of  the  Diorama  and  the 
Daguerreotype.  The  perfect  illusion  of  the  dioramic  pictures  has 
been  thus  explained :  ' '  When  an  object  is  viewed  at  so  great  a  dis- 
tance that  the  optic  axes  of  both  eyes  are  sensibly  parallel  when  di- 
rected toward  it,  the  perspective  projections  of  it,  seen  by  each  eye 
separately,  are  similar ;  and  the  appearance  to  the  two  eyes  is  precise- 
ly the  same  as  when  the  object  is  seen  by  one  eye  only.  There  is,  in 
such  case,  no  difference  between  the  visual  appearance  of  an  object  in 
relief  and  its  perspective  projection  on  a  plane  surface ;  hence  picto- 
rial representations  of  distant  objects,  when  those  circumstances  which 
would  prevent  or  disturb  the  illusion  are  carefully  excluded,  may  be 


THE   DAGUEKKEOTYPE.  435 

artist,  was  pursuing  researches  analogous  to  his  own  at 
Paris,  they  entered  into  a  copartnership  in  1829.  M. 
Niepce  died  in  1833,  without  having  contributed  any 
farther  improvement  to  the  now  common  stock ;  and  M. 
Daguerre,  taking  into  partnership  Niepce's  son,  Isidore, 
discovered  an  essentially  new  process,  which  was  named 
after  its  inventor,  the  Daguerreotype.  By  discarding  the 
use  of  the  bituminous  varnish,  and  substituting  a  highly- 
polished  plate  of  silver,  he  first  availed  himself  of  that 
great  agent  in  photographic  science,  the  action  of  iodine, 
by  means  of  which  he  so  increased  the  sensitiveness  of 
his  plate  as  to  produce  the  image  in  fewer  minutes  than 
it  had  previously  taken  hours.  At  the  same  time,  the 
invisible  picture  was  brought  to  light  by  the  fumes  of 
mercury,  after  which  a  strong  solution  of  common  salt 
removed  those  portions  of  the  surface  which  would  oth- 
erwise have  continued  to  darken,  and  would  have  ren- 
dered the  impression  permanent. 

In  1839  the  Daguerreotype  came  forth  to  the  world. 
Men  little  thought  how  many  years  of  patient  research 
had  been  expended  in  arriving  at  this  result.  Daguerre 
and  Mepce  then  applied  to  the  French  Chambers,  stat- 
ing that  they  possessed  a  secret  which,  if  protected  by 
patent,  would  be  comparatively  lost  to  society.  A  Com- 
mission was  appointed  by  the  French  government,  and 
the  secret  itself  was  intrusted  to  M.  Arago,  who  succeed- 
ed at  once  in  executing  a  beautiful  specimen  of  the  art. 
He  then  addressed  the  Chambers,  urging  the  immense 
advantages  which  might  have  been  derived,  "  for  exam- 
ple, during  the  expedition  to  Egypt,  by  means  of  repro- 
duction so  exact  and  so  rapid :  to  copy  the  millions  and 
millions  of  hieroglyphics  which  entirely  cover  the  great 
monuments  at  Thebes,  Memphis,  Carnac,  etc.,  would  re- 
quire scores  of  years  and  legions  of  artists,  whereas  with 
the  Daguerreotype  a  single  man  could  suffice  to  bring 
this  vast  labor  to  a  happy  conclusion."  M.  Biot  at  the 
same  time  compared  Daguerre's  invention  to  the  retina 
on  the  eye,  the  object  being  represented  on  one  and  the 
other  surfaces  with  almost  equal  accuracy.  The  result 

rendered  such  perfect  resemblances  of  the  objects  they  are  intended  to 
represent  as  to  be  mistaken  for  them.  The  Diorama  is  an  instance 
of  this." — PROFESSOR  WHEATSTONE  ;  Philosophical  Transactions,  1838. 


436  THE  TALBOT  YPE. 

was,  that  a  pension  of  6000  francs  (£250)  was  awarded 
to  M.  Daguerre,  and  4000  francs  (£166)  to  M.  Niepce; 
and  M.  Arago  declared  that  "  France  had  adopted  the 
discovery,  and  that  from  the  first  moment  she  had  cher- 
ished a  pride  in  liberally  bestowing  it  a  gift  to  the  ichole 
world"*  Nevertheless,  the  Daguerreotype  was  patent- 
ed in  England,  which  would  have  been  thus  restrained 
for  eight  years  from  the  use  of  this  important  process ; 
but  the  specification  was  afterward  found  defective,  and 
the  patent  invalidated.  All  that  has  since  been  done  for 
the  Daguerreotype  has  not  been  any  essential  deviation 
from  its  process. 

We  now  turn  to  England,  where  the  undivided  honor 
of  having  first  successfully  worked  out  the  secret  of 
Photography  belongs  to  Mr.  Fox  Talbot,  a  private  gen- 
tleman, who,  in  his  delightful  retreat  at  Lacock  Abbey, 
in  Wiltshire,  pursued  chemical  researches  for  his  own 
amusement.  He  took  up  the  ground  to  which  Davy 
and  Wedgwood  had  made  their  way.  Paper  was  the 
medium,  which  he  made  sensible  to  light  by  nitrate  of 
silver,  and  then  fixed  the  image  by  common  salt.  He 
first  called  his  process  photogenic  drawing  •  then  calo- 
tyPe->  which  his  friends  changed  to  Talbotype,  in  imitation 
of  Daguerre's  example.  Mr.  Fox  Talbot  is  stated  in  the 
Quarterly  Review,  No.  202,  to  have  sent  his  method  to 
the  Royal  Society  in  the  same  month  that  Daguerre's 
discovery  was  made  known  (Jan.,  1839) ;  but  Sir  David 
Brewster  dates  Mr.  Talbot's  communication  six  months 
earlier. 

As  a  new  art,  which  gave  employment  to  thousands,  Mr.  Talbot 
brought  it  to  a  high  degree  of  perfection.  He  expended  large  sums 
of  money  in  obtaining  for  the  public  the  full  benefit  of  his  invention ; 
and  toward  the  termination  of  his  patent  he  liberally  surrendered  to 
photographic  amateurs  and  others  all  the  rights  which  he  possessed, 
with  the  one  exception  of  taking  portraits  for  sale,  which  he  had  con- 
veyed to  others,  and  which  he  was  bound  by  law  and  in  honor  to 
secure  to  them.  As  Mr.  Talbot  had  derived  no  pecuniary  benefit 
from  his  patent,  he  had  intended  to  apply  for  an  extension  of  it  to  the 
Privy  Council;  but  the  art  had  been  so  universally  practiced,  that 
numerous  parties  interested  in  opposing  the  application  combined 

*  Arago  was  so  impressed  with  the  vast  importance  of  Photography 
in  all  its  relations,  that  (Lord  Brougham  informs  us)  the  last  years  of 
his  life  were  chiefly  occupied  with  whatever  belonged  to  this  subject. 


THE   EARLIEST   DAGUERREOTYPES.  437 

with  others  to  reduce  the  patent,  and  thus  prevent  the  possibility  of  its 
renewal.  Although  we  are  confident  that  a  jury  of  philosophers  in 
any  part  of  the  world  would  have  given  a  verdict  in  favor  of  Mr. 
Talbot's  patent,  taken  as  a  whole,  and  so  long  unchallenged,  yet  we 
regret  to  say  that  an  English  judge  and  jury  were  found  to  deprive 
him  of  his  right,  and  transfer  it  to  the  public.  The  patrons  of  science 
and  of  art  stood  aloof  in  the  contest,  and  none  of  our  scientific  insti- 
tutions, and  no  intelligent  member  of  the  government,  came  forward 
to  claim  from  the  state  a  national  reward  to  Mr.  Talbot.  How  dif- 
ferent in  France  was  the  treatment  of  Niepce  and  Daguerre  ! 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  that  Daguerre's  patent  for  the  sister  art  of  the 
Daguerreotype  was  also  invalidated  by  an-  English  jury;  "and,"  says 
Sir  David  Brewster,  "it  will  never  be  forgotten  in  the  history  of  art 
that  the  rights  of  property  over  the  two  noblest  inventions  of  the  age, 
which  the  patent  laws  were  enacted  to  secure,  were  wrested  from  their 
owners  by  the  unjust  decision  of  an  English  jury,  prompted  by  the 
selfish  interests  of  individuals  who  had  been  fattening  on  the  genius 
of  the  inventors." — Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  8th  edit. 

Next,  in  April,  1839,  the  Rev.  J.  B.  Reade  delineated 
objects  of  natural  history  by  the  agency  of  light,  from 
their  images  taken  by  the  solar  microscope. 

One  of  the  earliest  attempts  in  Paris  was  thus  described :  "A  pub- 
lic experiment  of  the  Daguerreotype  was  made  by  its  inventor  on 
Saturday  last,  in  one  of  the  halls  of  the  hotel  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay. 
M.  Daguerre  described  the  mode  of  using  his  instrument  to  an  assem- 
bly of  about  a  hundred  and  twenty  persons,  and,  in  the  course  of  an 
hour  and  a  few  minutes,  produced  a  beautiful  view  of  the  river,  the 
terrace,  and  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries."  In  1839,  however,  the  proc- 
ess at  Paris  occupied  but  from  three  to  thirty  minutes,  and  Daguerre 
was  able  to  use  the  apparatus  in  the  public  streets  without  being  no- 
ticed by  the  passengers.  Still,  the  disappointment  in  the  early  plates 
was  costly  and  mortifying,  and  reminded  one  of  Uncle  Toby's  "here 
to-day  and  gone  to-morrow."  Many  a  plate  for  which  ten  guineas 
were  paid  disappeared  in  a  corresponding  number  of  days. 

The  first  experiment  made  in  England  with  the  Daguerreotype  was 
exhibited  by  M.  St.  Croix,  on  Friday,  September  13,  1839,  at  No.  7 
Piccadilly,  nearly  opposite  the  southern  Circus  of  Regent  Street,  when 
the  picture  produced  was  a  beautiful  miniature  representation  of  the 
houses,  pathway,  sky,  etc.,  resembling  an  exquisite  mezzotint.  M. 
St.  Croix  subsequently  removed  to  the  Argyll  Rooms,  Regent  Street, 
where  his  experimental  results  became  a  scientific  exhibition.  The 
discovery  was  patented  by  Mr.  Miles  Berry,  who  sold  the  first  license 
to  M.  Claudet  for  £100  or  £200  a  year ;  and  in  twelve  months  after 
disposed  of  the  patent  to  Mr.  Beard,  who,  however,  did  not  take  a 
Daguerreotype  portrait  until  after  Dr.  Draper  had  sent  from  New 
York  a  portrait  to  the  editor  of  the  Philosophical  Magazine,  with  a 
paper  on  the  subject. 

The  Talbotype  process  underwent  various  improve- 
ments by  Herschel,  Cundell,  Bingham,Channing,  Le  Gray, 


438  PHOTOGRAPHIC   PROCESSES. 

Martin,  Miiller,  Stewart,  Hunt,  Fyfe,  Furlong,  Blanquart, 
Everard,  Collen,  Ryan,  Woods,  Home,  Saguer,  Flacheron, 
and  others ;  but  the  most  important  improvements  were 
made  by  M.  Victor  Niepce  and  Mr.  Scott  Archer,  the 
former  substituting  albumen,  and  the  latter  collodion, 
for  paper.  The  albumen  process  can  only  be  employed 
for  statues  and  landscapes,  and  with  it  have  been  pro- 
duced larger  and  more  artistic  pictures  than  by  any 
other  means.  Mr.  Archer  generously  threw  his  marvel- 
ous improvement  open  to  the  public.  The  birth  and 
parentage  of  collodion  are  both  among  the  recent  won- 
ders of  the  age.  Gun-cotton  is  but  a  child  in  the  annals 
of  chemical  science ;  and  collodion,  which  is  a  solution 
of  this  compound  in  ether  and  alcohol,  is  its  offspring : 
its  first  use  was  in  surgery,  its  second  in  photography. 
Collodion  may  also  be  prepared  from  paper,  flax,  the  pith 
of  the  elder,  and  many  other  vegetable  substances.  Not 
only  does  it  provide  a  film  of  perfect  transparency,  te- 
nuity, and  intense  adhesiveness ;  not  only  is  it  easy  of 
manipulation,  portable,  and  preservable,  but  it  supplies 
that  element  of  rapidity  which,  more  than  any  thing  else, 
has  given  the  miraculous  character  to  the  art. 

The  instantaneous  process  of  taking  a  picture  on  col- 
lodion in  half  a  second  has  enabled  the  artist  to  delineate 
"  a  thoroughfare  in  London  with  its  noon-day  crowd." 
Farther  than  this  the  powers  of  Photography  can  never 
go :  light  is  made  to  poutray  with  a  celerity  only  second 
to  that  with  which  it  travels ! 

We  have  not  space  to  do  more  than  state  that  Mr. 
Norton's  important  application  of  bichromate  of  potash 
has  led  M.  E.  Becquerel  to  his  photographic  paper,  with 
iodide  of  starch ;  Mr.  Hunt  to  his  chromatype ;  and  the 
photographic  property  of  this  salt  is  also  the  foundation 
of  M.  Pretsch's  photo-galvanography,  and  of  some  at- 
tempts at  photo-lithography.  Mr.  Talbot,  in  1841,  pat- 
ented a  more  sensitive  photographic  method ;  and  sub- 
sequently an  instantaneous  process,  photographic  engrav- 
ings, and  the  phoglyphic  process. 

Meanwhile,  Sir  John  Herschel  and  Mr  .-Hunt  found 
preparations  of  gold,  platinum,  mercury,  iron,  copper,  tin, 
nickel,  manganese,  lead,  potash,  etc.,  more  or  less  sensitive, 
and  capable  of  producing  pictures  of  beauty  and  distinct- 


APPLICATIONS    OF   PHOTOGRAPHY.  439 

ive  character;  and  paper  prepared  with  the  juices  of 
beautiful  flowers  was  put  in  requisition. 

Photography  may  be  said  to  have  depended  for  its 
perfection  upon  wonders  only  a  little  older  than  itself. 
Iodine,  on  which  all  popular  photography  rests,  was  not 
discovered  until  1811 ;  and  bromine,  the  only  other  equal- 
ly sensitive  substance,  not  till  1826 ;  and  gun-cotton  and 
chloroform  only  just  preceded  coUodion.  To  these  may 
be  added  the  optical  improvements  purposely  contrived 
or  adapted  for  the  service  of  the  photograph,  besides  in- 
numerable other  mechanical  aids.  The  value  of  photog- 
raphy, when  kept  perfectly  distinct,  as  an  auxiliary  to 
the  artist,  is  also  unquestionably  great,  though  only  be- 
ginning to  be  duly  and  correctly  appreciated.* 

Although  M.  Biot,  in  1840,  considered  it  as  an  illusion 
to  expect  photographs  to  have  the  color  of  the  objects 
which  they  represent,  yet  an  important  advance  has  been 
made  to  this  result  by  M.  Claudet  and  Sir  John  Herschel 
in  copying  the  colors  of  nature.  Mr.  Hunt  "  produced 
colored  images,  not  merely  impressions  of  the  rays  of  the 
spectrum,  but  copies  in  the  camera  of  colored  objects." 
But  the  most  striking  results  have  been  obtained  by  M. 
Edmund  Becquerel  and  M.  Niepce  St.  Victor ;  the  latter 
is  said  to  have  secured  "  ah1  the  colors  of  a  picture  by 
preparing  a  bath  composed  of  the  deuto-chloride  of 


copper." 


The  most  important  application  of  Photography  has 
certainly  been  to  the  Stereoscope,  not  only  in  reference 
to  art,  but  to  the  great  purposes  of  education,  and  to  the 
illustration  of  works  on  every  branch  of  knowledge. 
But  perhaps  one  of  the  most  curious  applications  of  the 
art  has  been  to  Microscopic  Portraits,  by  Mr.  Dancer,  of 
Manchester.  Some  of  these  are  so  small  that  ten  thou- 
sand could  be  included  in  a  square  inch ;  and  yet,  when 
magnified,  the  pictures  have  all  the  smoothness  and  vigor 
of  ordinary  photographs. 

Lord  Brougham  observes:  "How  vast  an  improvement  of  social 
life,  and  how  valuable  an  addition  to  our  power  of  executing  the  law, 
has  been  this  optical  discovery,  by  which  we  have  made  the  sun  our 
fellow-workman !  It  would  have  been  deemed  a  romance  had  any 
one  foretold,  from  observing  the  effect  of  light  in  discoloring  certain 

*  See  Painting  Popularly  Explained,  p.  114-119. 


440  THE   STEREOSCOPE. 

substances,  such  a  consummation  as  obtaining  the  most  accurate  por- 
traits in  a  second ;  and  the  consequent  power,  not  only  of  preserving 
the  features  of  those  most  revered  and  beloved,  but  of  preventing  the 
escape  of  criminals,  the  commission  of  numberless  frauds,  and  the 
defeat  of  the  injured  in  seeking  the  recovery  of  their  rights.  In  the 
sciences  of  astronomy,  zoology,  geology,  meteorology,  ethnology,  elec- 
tricity, and  magnetism,  Photography  has  been  advantageously  em- 
ployed. The  spots  on  the  sun,  the  surface  of  the  moon,  the  forms  of 
the  planets,  and  even  groups  of  stars,  have  been  delineated  by  their 
own  light.  M.  de  la  Rue  has  obtained  pictures  of  the  moon  analogous 
to  binocular  axes,  which,  when  aided  by  the  Stereoscope,  exhibit  her 
as  a  solid  globe.  The  meteorologist  registers  photographically,  in  his 
absence,  the  indications  of  the  barometer,  thermometer,  and  hygrome- 
ter ;  the  variations  of  the  earth's  magnetism  are  recorded  every  min- 
ute on  chemically  prepared  paper :  and  the  electricity  of  the  atmos- 
phere, brought  down  into  the  observatory,  is  made  to  exhibit  on  paper 
the  number  of  its  variations  and  the  intensity  of  its  action.  The 
ethnologist  has  begun  to  collect  accurate  pictures  of  the  different 
races  of  man.  The  zoologist  has  obtained  forms  of  animal  life  which 
the  painter  had  attempted  in  vain  to  preserve.  The  geologist  has 
obtained  delineations  of  phenomena  which  defied  the  highest  efforts 
of  the  pencil.  And  the  botanist  has  transferred  to  imperishable  tab- 
lets those  beautiful  and  complex  forms  of  vegetable  life  which  we  seek 
in  vain  in  the  richest  botanical  collections." — SIR  DAVID  BKEWSTER  ; 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

Within  a  score  of  years  from  the  first  experiment  ex- 
hibited by  the  Stereoscope,  it  has  been  advanced  from  a 
rude  and  imperfect  apparatus  to  "  one  of  the  most  popn 
lar  and  interesting  instruments  which  science  has  pre- 
sented to  the  arts."  It  is  employed  for  representing 
solid  figures,  by  combining  in  one  image  two  plane 
representations  of  the  object  as  seen  by  each  eye  sepa- 
rately; or,  in  other  words,  two  pictures  of  any  object, 
taken  from  different  points  of  view,  are  seen  as  a  single 
picture  of  that  object,  having  the  actual  appearance  of 
relief  or  solidity.  Hence  the  name,  from  two  Greek 
words  signifying  Solid  I  view. 

That  we  see  with  two  eyes,  yet  that  only  a  single 
representation  of  the  object  is  presented  to  the  mind,  and 
that  the  picture  of  bodies  seen  by  both  eyes  is  formed 
by  the  union  of  dissimilar  pictures  formed  by  each,  must 
have  been  very  early  observed,  and  the  cause  was  specu- 
lated on  by  the  earliest  Greek  philosophers.  Euclid 
knew  these  palpable  truths  more  than  two  thousand 
years  ago,  and  showed  by  means  of  a  sphere  that  each 
eye  sees  a  dissimilar  representation  of  an  object.  Five 


THE   STEREOSCOPE.  441 

centuries  later,  Galen  endeavored  to  explain  the  matter 
by  stating  that  the  dissimilar  pictures  are  not  seen  at 
the  same  instant,  but  successively ;  and  that  these  rapid- 
ly-succeeding pictures  produce  on  the  mind  the  impres- 
sion which  is  conceived  of  the  object.  In  looking  at 
the  diagram  given  by  Galen,  we  recognize  at  once  not 
only  the  principle,  but  the  construction  of  the  Stereo- 
scope.* 

As  the  vision  of  the  object  was  obtained  by  the  union 
of  these  dissimilar  pictures,  an  instrument  only  was 
wanted  to  take  such  pictures,  and  another  to  combine 
them.  "  The  Binocular  Photographic  Camera,"  says  Sir 
David  Brewster,  "  was  the  one,  and  the  Stereoscope  the 
other." 

Baptista  Porta  repeats  the  proposition  of  Euclid  on 
the  vision  of  a  sphere  with  one  and  both  eyes,  but,  believ- 
ing that  we  only  see  with  one  eye  at  a  time,  he  denies 
the  accuracy  of  Euclid's  theorems ;  and  while  he  admits 
the  correctness  of  Galen's  views,  he  endeavors  to  explain 
them  upon  other  principles.  The  Greek  physician,  there- 
fore (Galen),  and  the  Neapolitan  philosopher  (Porta), 
who  has  employed  a  more  distinct  diagram,  certainly 
knew  and  adopted  the  fundamental  principle  of  the 
Stereoscope,  and  nothing  more  was  required  for  produc- 
ing pictures  in  full  relief  than  a  simple  instrument  for 
uniting  the  right  and  left  hand  dissimilar  pictures. 

We  next  find,  in  the  treatise  on  Painting  which  Leo- 
nardo da  Yinci  left  behind  him  in  manuscript,  a  distinct 
reference  to  the  dissimilarity  of  the  pictures  seen  by  each 
eye  as  the  reason  why  "  a  painting,  though  conducted 
with  the  greatest  art,  and  finished  to  the  last  perfection 
with  regard  to  its  contours,  its  lights,  its  shadows,  and 
its  colors,  can  never  show  a  relievo  equal  to  that  of  the 
natural  objects,  unless  these  be  viewed  at  a  distance,  and 
with  a  single  eye,"  which  he  proceeds  to  demonstrate. 
Aguilonius,  the  learned  Jesuit,  who  published  his  Optics 
in  1613,  next  attempts  to  explain,  but  without  success, 
why  the  two  dissimilar  pictures  of  a  solid  seen  by  each 
eye  do  not,  when  united,  give  a  confused  and  imperfect 
view  of  it ;  but,  down  to  our  time,  natural  philosophers 

*  The  Stereoscope ;  its  History,  Theory,  and  Construction.  By  Sir 
David  Brcwster.  1856. 

T  2 


442 

have  been  almost  universally  content  to  adopt  the  opin- 
ion that  we  see  with  only  one  eye  at  a  time. 

Thus  the  matter  rested  until,  in  1838,  Mr.  Wheatstone 
reopened  the  question  of  vision  by  one  or  by  two  eyes 
by  arguing  that  the  appearance  of  relief  and  solidity 
which  we  obtain  in  looking  at  objects  in  nature  arises 
from  there  being  a  dissimilar  picture  of  the  object  pro- 
jected simultaneously  on  the  retina  of  each  eye,  the  optic 
axes  of  which  are  not  parallel,  whereas  in  viewing  a  pic- 
torial representation  two  similar  pictures  are  projected 
on  the  retina?,  and  hence  the  resultant  flatness ;  and  Mr. 
Wheatstone  sought  to  illustrate  this  theory  by  the  ingen- 
ious instrument  known  as  the  Stereoscope.  Its  princi- 
ple has  been  thus  simplified  by  Mr.  R.  Hunt,  F.R.S. : 

When  we  look  at  any  round  object,  first  with  one  eye,  and  then 
with  the  other,  we  discover  that  with  the  right  eye  we  see  most  of  the 
right-hand  side  of  the  object,  and  with  the  left  eye  most  of  the  left- 
hand  side.  These  two  images  are  combined,  and  we  see  an  object 
which  we  know  to  be  round. 

This  is  illustrated  by  the  Stereoscope,  which  consists  of  two  mirrors 
placed  each  at  an  angle  of  45  degrees,  or  of  two  semi-lenses  turned 
with  their  curved  sides  toward  each  other.  To  view  its  phenomena, 
two  pictures  are  obtained  by  the  camera  on  photographic  paper  of 
any  object  in  two  positions,  corresponding  with  the  conditions  of 
viewing  it  with  the  two  eyes.  By  the  mirrors  or  the  lenses  these  dis- 
similar pictures  are  combined  within  the  eye,  and  the  vision  of  an  act- 
ually solid  object  is  produced  from  the  pictures  represented  on  a  plane 
surface. 

The  Stereoscope  excited  considerable  interest  among 
scientific  persons  when  first  exhibited ;  the  pictures  pre- 
pared for  it  were  almost  exclusively  dissimilar  outlines 
of  various  geometrical  solids ;  but  it  has  been  almost 
superseded  by  the  Refracting  Stereoscope,  in  which  the 
simple  principle  of  the  Stereoscope  is  combined  with,  or 
rather  aided  by,  photography.  This  principle  might 
have  been  discovered  a  century  ago,  for  the  reasoning 
which  led  to  it  was  independent  of  all  the  properties  of 
light :  but  it  would  never  have  been  illustrated,  far  less 
multiplied  as  it  now  is,  without  photography.  A  few 
diagrams,  of  sufficient  identity  and  difference  to  prove 
the  truth  of  the  principle,  might  have  been  constructed 
by  hand  for  the  gratification  of  a  few  sages ;  but  no  art- 
ist, it  is  to  be  hoped,  could  have  been  found  possessing 
the  requisite  ability  and  stupidity  to  execute  two  por- 


BREWSTER'S  LENTICULAR  STEREOSCOPE.         443 

traits,  or  two  groups,  or  two  interiors,  or  two  landscapes, 
identical  in  the  most  elaborate  detail,  and  yet  differing 
in  point  of  view  by  the  inch  between  the  two  human 
eyes,  by  which  the  principle  is  brought  to  the  level  of 
any  capacity.  Here,  therefore,  the  accuracy  and  insens- 
ibility of  a  machine  could  alone  avail ;  and  if  in  the  or- 
der of  things  the  cheap  popular  toy  which  the  Stereo- 
scope now  represents  was  necessary  for  the  use  of  man, 
the  photograph  was  first  necessary  for  the  service  of  the 
Stereoscope.* 

Sir  David  Brewster,  in  a  series  of  elaborate  experi- 
ments to  establish  his  theory  of  binocular  vision,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  that  of  Professor  Wheatstone,  invented 
the  Lenticular  Stereoscope,  which  he  has  fully  illustrated 
in  his  able  volume  on  the  Stereoscope.  It  consists  of  a 
pyramidal  box,  blackened  on  the  inside,  and  having  a 
lid  for  the  admission  of  light  when  the  pictures  are 
opaque.  The  box  is  open  below,  in  order  to  let  the 
light  pass  through  the  pictures  when  they  are  transpar- 
ent. The  top  of  the  box  consists  of  two  portions,  in 
one  of  which  is  the  right-eye  tube,  containing  a  semi- 
lens  or  quarter-lens,  and  in  the  other  the  left-eye  tube, 
also  containing  a  semi-lens  or  quarter-lens.  The  two  dis- 
similar pictures  (or  slide)  are  placed  in  a  groove  in  the 
bottom  of  the  box,  when,  on  looking  through  the  eye- 
tubes,  the  pictures  are  seen  united  into  one  single  pic- 
ture; and  the  object  or  objects,  if  a  proper  amount  of 
light  is  obtained,  stand  out  with  an  almost  magical  ap- 
pearance of  relief  and  solidity.  Thus  has  the  employ- 
ment of  photography  for  the  stereographs  wonderfully 
extended  the  range  of  the  instrument,  and  rendered  it 
one  of  the  most  popular  means  of  social  amusement,  and, 
rightly  used,  an  extremely  valuable  means  of  instruction. 
We  have  said  that  each" of  the  eye-pieces  contains  a 
semi-lens :  it  is  by  means  of  these  semi-lenses,  transfer- 
ring the  two  dissimilar  pictures  or  stereographs  to  a 
middle  point,  and  their  union  thereon,  that  the  stereo- 
scopic effect  is  produced. 

A  detective  application,  similar  to  that  of  photographic 
portraits,  has  been  devised  for  the  Stereoscope.  In  1859, 
it  was  ascertained  by  experiment  that  if  two  thoroughly 
*  Quarterly  Review,  No.  202. 


444  THE   STEREOSCOPE. 

identical  copies  of  ordinary  print  be  placed  side  by  side 
in  the  Stereoscope,  they  will  not  offer  any  unusual  ap- 
pearance. But  if  there  be  the  slightest,  although  inap- 
preciable, difference — as,  for  instance,  in  the  interval  sep- 
arating the  same  words — the  difference  will  be  made  evi- 
dent in  the  stereoscope  by  the  elevation  into  relief  (or 
the  reverse)  of  the  corresponding  space  above  the  ad- 
joining parts.  Professor  Dove,  of  Berlin,  proposes  the 
above  as  an  infallible  means  of  distinguishing  a  forged 
bank-note  from  a  genuine  one,  etc. 


CAOUTCHOUC  AND  ITS  MANUFACTURES. 

THE  remarkable  substance  known  as  Caoutchouc  is 
produced  by  many  different  plants,  and  its  manifold  ap- 
plications within  comparatively  few  years  are  certainly 
one  of  the  marvels  of  our  scientific  age.  "How  curious, 
how  wonderful,"  says  an  acute  writer,*  "is  it  to  find  a 
milky  juice  which  exudes  from  certain  trees  on  the  banks 
of  the  Amazon,  or  from  vines  in  the  jungles  of  India, 
transformed  by  the  ingenuity  of  man,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames  or  the  Irwell,  into  such  a  vast  variety  of  useful 
and  interesting  objects !  But  it  is  still  more  curious  and 
still  more  wonderful  to  reflect  that  this  milky  juice,  with 
the  many  uses  to  which  it  is  put,  forms  a  necessary  part 
of  the  progress  of  civilization,  and  tends  to  unite  all  the 
human  race  into  one  great  and  glorious  family." 

Caoutchouc  was  first  introduced  into  Europe  early  in 
the  last  century;  but  its  origin  was  unknown  till  the 
visit  of  the  French  Academicians  to  South  America  in 
1715.  They  ascertained  that  it  was  the  inspissated  juice 
of  a  Brazilian  tree,  called  by  the  natives  Hhve ;  and  an 
account  of  the  discovery  was  sent  to  the  Academy  by  M. 
de  la  Condamine  in  1736.  One-and-thirty  years  later, 
1767,  a  specimen  was  first  brought  to  England,  and  was 
sent  to  Mr.  Canton  by  Sir  Joseph  Banks  as  "two  balls 
of  the  new  Elastic  Substance."  In  1772,  Dr.  Priestley 
thus  speaks  of  the  new  substance  in  his  Introduction  to 
Perspective :  "  I  have  seen  a  substance  excellently  adapt- 
ed to  the  purpose  of  wiping  from  paper  the  marks  of  a 
black-lead  pencil.  It  must  therefore  be  of  singular  use 
to  those  who  practice  drawing.  It  is  sold  by  Mr.  Nairne, 
mathematical-instrument  maker,  opposite  the  Royal  Ex- 
change. He  sells  a  cubical  piece  of  about  half  an  inch 
for  three  shillings,  and  he  says  it  will  last  several  years." 

From  this  first  application  arose  the  name  of  India- 
rubber.  The  "  new  substance"  engaged,  as  soon  as  it  was 
*  Mr.  Thomas  Hodgskin. 


448         MANUFACTURE  OF  CAOUTCHOUC. 

known,  the  "  attention  of  philosophers."  They  immersed 
it  in  all  kinds  of  solvents,  tried  its  influence  on  sounds, 
found  in  it  a  confirmation  of  the  celebrated  theory  of 
latent  heat,  ascertained  its  elements  according  to  the  then 
knowledge  of  the  elements;  but  they  .made  nothing  of 
it.  For  more  than  120  years  they  had  it  in  their  hands 
and  in  their  laboratories,  thought  it  a  wonderful  sub- 
stance, which  might  be  converted  to  all  kinds  of  uses, 
but  got  no  farther  than  to  ascertain  that  by  boiling  it  in 
water  its  edges  became  soft,  and  that  pieces  of  it  then 
pressed  together  could  be  united  into  one  homogeneous 
whole,  which  led  to  the  formation  of  flexible  tubes  and  a 
few  surgical  instruments. 

About  the  year  1820,  however,  Mr.  Thomas  Hancock, 
afterward  of  the  firm  of  Mackintosh  and  Co.,  being  en- 
gaged in  mechanical  pursuits,  began  to  take  great  inter- 
est in  Caoutchouc.  He  wondered  that  such  a  curious 
substance  should  have  been  put  to  little  or  no  other  use 
than  rubbing  out  pencil-marks ;  his  wonder  excited  his 
exertions ;  chemical  knowledge  he  had  none,  and  trying, 
like  the  chemists,  to  find  out  a  solvent,  he  failed.  Then, 
taking  a  more  simple  means,  he  cut  Caoutchouc  into  nar- 
row slips,  inclosing  them  in  a  case  of  thin  leather  or  cot- 
ton ;  and  elastic  springs  for  gloves,  braces,  etc. — that  be- 
fore were  formed  only  of  metal  wire  in  a  spiral  form — 
were  made  of  this  substance.  This  was  the  original  new 
application,  in  1820,  of  Caoutchouc.  Mr.  Hancock  fol- 
lowed up  his  success.  He  was  always  at  work  with  his 
rubber.  He  cut  it  into  shreds ;  he  rent  it  into  pieces ; 
he  invented  machines  for  chewing  it  and  pounding  it 
into  a  mass ;  he  stewed  it  in  digesters ;  he  baked  it ;  he 
made  it  into  solid  blocks ;  he  spread  it  into  sheets  almost 
as  thin  as  the  finest  textures  of  the  animal  frame :  he 
found  one  solvent  for  it,  which  had  before  been  frequent- 
ly tried,  but  only  under  the  new  mechanical  form  which 
he  gave  it  did  oil  of  turpentine  (camphine)  answer  the 
purpose.  Other  persons  found  other  solvents.  From 
1820  the  new  applications  of  this  curious  substance  were 
numerous  and  successive — in  other  countries,  especially 
in  America,  as  well  as  here. 

Mr.  Hancock  has  been  truly  called  the  "  father  of  this 
important  and  wonderfully-increasing  branch  of  the  arts ;" 


MANUFACTURE   OF   CAOUTCHOUC.  449 

but  it  had  many  nurses.  In  1823  Mr.  Macintosh  applied 
the  naphtha  obtained  from  coal-tar  to  dissolve  rubber, 
thus  making  a  water-proof  varnish  ;  he  invented  and 
brought  into  use  the  garments  and  the  cloth  which  bear 
his  name. 

The  manufacture  of  Caoutchouc  has  three  principal 
branches:  1.  The  condensation  of  the  crude  lumps  or 
shreds  of  Caoutchouc,  as  imported,  into  compact  homo- 
geneous blocks,  and  the  cutting  of  these  blocks  into  cakes 
or  shreds,  for  the  stationer,  surgeon,  shoemaker,  etc. 
2.  The  filature  of  either  the  India-rubber  bottles,  or  the 
artificial  sheet  Caoutchouc,  into  tapes  and  threads,  which, 
being  clothed  with  silk,  cotton,  linen,  or  woolen  yarns, 
form  the  basis  of  elastic  tissues  of  every  kind.  3.  The 
conversion  of  the  refuse  cuttings  and  coarser  qualities  of 
Caoutchouc  into  a  viscid  varnish,  which,  being  applied 
between  two  surfaces  of  cloth,  constitutes  the  well-known 
double  fabrics,  impervious  to  water  and  air. 

It  is  curious  to  read  that  this  application  of  Caoutchouc 
to  water-proofing  was  known  in  South  America  upward 
of  a  century  since.  In  a  work  entitled  La  Monarchic*, 
Indiana,  printed  at  Madrid  in  1723,  we  find  described 
"  very  profitable  trees  in  New  Spain,  from  which  there 
distill  various  liquors  and  resins."  Among  them  is  de- 
scribed a  tree  called  ulquahuill,  which  the  natives  cut 
with  a  hatchet,  to  obtain  the  white,  thick,  and  adhesive 
milk.  This,  when  coagulated,  they  made  into  balls,  call- 
ed ulli,  which  rebounded  very  high  when  struck  to  the 
ground,  and  were  used  in  various  games.  The  author 
continues :  "  Our  people  (the  Spaniards)  make  use  of 
their  ulli  to  varnish  their  cloaks,  made  of  hempen  cloth, 
for  wet  weather;  which  are  good  to  resist  water,  but 
not  against  the  sun,  by  whose  heat  and  rays  the  ulli  is 
dissolved."  India-rubber  is  not  known  in  Mexico  at  the 
present  day  by  any  other  name  than  that  of  ulli;  and 
the  oiled-silk  covering  of  hats  very  generally  worn 
throughout  the  country  by  travelers  is  always  called 
ulli.  Shoes  (worn  in  some  countries  as  over-shoes)  have 
also  long  been  made  of  Caoutchouc  in  its  native  country. 
This  is  done  by  dipping  the  wooden  lasts  in  the  Caout- 
chouc milk,  and  then  drying  them  over  the  smoke  of  a 
fire  made  with  palm-nut.  The  coatings  are  repeated 


450  VULCANITE. 

until  the  shoes  are  sufficiently  thick,  a  greater  number 
being  given  to  the  bottom  or  sole. 

The  grand  improvement  in  the  texture  and  qualities 
of  the  substance,  by  which  its  applicability  to  different 
purposes  has  been  greatly  enlarged,  is  called  vulcanizing, 
and  was  not  made  till  1843,  and  seems  then  to  have 
been  brought  about  by  something  like  an  accident.  In 
1842,  Mr.  Hancock  was  shown  small  bits  of  Caoutchouc, 
which  an  American  agent  said  would  not  stiffen  by  cold, 
and  were  not  much  affected  by  solvents,  heat,  or  oil.  To 
give  Caoutchouc  the  property  of  remaining  flexible  under 
all  circumstances  and  changes  was  most  desirable.  Mr. 
Hancock  was  again  set  wondering,  or  was  stimulated  by 
the  assertion ;  the  small  bits  of  Caoutchouc  so  changed 
smelt  of  sulphur.  He  made  all  kinds  of  experiments  in 
the  direction  thus  indicated,  and  at  length  ascertained 
that  the  desired  alteration  was  effected  in  the  Caout- 
chouc by  exposing  it  to  the  action  of  sulphur  at  a  high 
temperature.  "  Had  I  known,"  he  says,  after  he  had 
ascertained  the  fact,  "the  simple  mode  by  which  this 
result  could  be  produced,  I  might  have  made  the  discov- 
ery at  once." 

Caoutchouc,  thus  acted  on  by  sulphur,  retains  its  per- 
fect elasticity  in  all  temperatures,  and,  vulcanized  under 
pressure,  can  be  made  in  all  forms  hard  and  durable.  It 
can  be  turned  in  a  lathe,  and  cut  into  screws.  It  has 
been  made  into  flutes,  which  sound  easily  and  sweetly, 
and  are  so  polished  as  to  resemble  ebony.  Of  it  are 
made  ^walking-sticks  and  picture-frames,  and  delicate 
mountings  of  all  descriptions.  A  collection  of  beauti- 
fully made  articles  of  this  class  can  be  seen  in  the  "  Vul- 
canite Court,"  at  the  Crystal  Palace,  Sydenham.  It  is 
converted  into  whips,  hard,  like  wood,  at  the  handle,  and 
flexible,  like  the  finest  kind  of  leather,  at  the  thong.  It 
has  some  most  remarkable  properties.  A  ball  will  pass 
through  it ;  and  the  hole  closes  so  completely  that  per- 
sons who  have  tried  the  experiment  would  not  believe 
the  fact  till  it  was  demonstrated  by  the  ball  striking  ob- 
jects beyond  the  rubber.  A  piece  two  inches  thick  and 
a  foot  square  was  laid  on  an  anvil  under  Mr.  Nasmyth's 
steam-hammer ;  a  six-inch  round  .shot  was  placed  on  the 
rubber ;  the  hammer  was  then  made  to  fall  on  the  shot 


VULCANITE.  451 

with  tremendous  force,  which  was  broken  to  pieces, 
while  the  rubber  on  which  it  was  laid  remained  as 
elastic  and  uninjured  as  when  it  was  placed  on  the  anvil ; 
nay,  more  extraordinary  still,  the  shot  had  come  into 
contact  with  the  anvil,  and  was  flattened  slightly,  but 
the  rubber  had  retained,  or  immediately  resumed,  its 
original  form  and  condition. 

When  Mr.  Hancock  showed  the  first  piece  of  his 
"solid  rubber"  to  an  old  gentleman,  it  was  returned 
with  the  prescient  remark,  "  the  child  is  yet  unborn  who 
will  see  the  end  of  that."*  Ever  since,  the  trade  and 
the  manufacture  have  been  progressive  here  and  in  every 
other  part  of  the  civilized  world.  Within  the  memory 
of  this  generation — in  less  than  forty  years — an  entirely 
new  art  has  grown  up  from  India-rubber  bottles,  and  it 
is  forever  increasing.  It  is  by  no  means  the  only  art 
which  has  come  into  existence  in  the  time,  and  attained 
an  astonishing  perfection.  Moreover,  all  these  new  arts 
— the  manufacture  of  rubber,  photography,  railways, 
telegraphs,  etc. — are  already  common  to  all  the  civilized 
world. 

The  great  consumption  of  Caoutchouc  has  naturally 
led  to  its  being  sought  in  other  regions  than  that  in 
which  it  was  first  found.  It  was  at  first  principally 
imported  from  Para;  but  considerable  quantities  have 
since  been  brought  from  Java,  Penang,  Singapore,  and 
Assam.  In  the  latter  country  it  has  been  obtained  from 
trees  in  vast  forests  100  feet  high  and  74  feet  in  girth. 

*  Personal  Narrative  of  the,  Origin  £h,d  Progress  of  the  Caoutchouc 
or  India-Rubber  Manufacture,  etc.  By  Thomas  Hancock. 

Note. — There  is  dispute  as  to  the  discovery  of  the  processes  by 
which  these  difficulties  were  surmounted.  On  one  side,  Mr.  Charles 
Goodyear  is  said  to  have  labored  for  five  years  in  the  research  of  the 
secret,  and  at  last  to  have  discovered  it  by  accidentally  placing  some 
pieces  of  rubber  against  a  hot  stove,  and  noticing  that  they  charred 
instead  of  melting.  This  discovery,  combined  with  Mr.  Hayward's 
previous  adaptation  of  sulphur  as  a  dryer  of  rubber,  is  said  by  Mr. 
Goodyear's  friends  to  have  led  him  to  invent  the  vulcanizing  process. 
Mr.  Goodyear  claims  to  have  made  his  discovery  in  1839 ;  but  the 
first  authentic  evidence  of  the  fact  is  the  patent  obtained  in  1844. 
Of  course,  we  do  not  pretend  to  adjudicate  a  dispute  which  has  exer- 
cised so  many  lawyers'  wits.  It  is  curious,  however,  that  both  dis- 
coverers should  have  hit  upon  the  same  name  for  their  discovery — 
vulcanization. — Am.  Ed. 


GUTTA  PEECHA  AND  ITS  MANUFAC- 
TUKES. 

THIS  wonderful  substance  appears  to  have  been  brought 
for  the  first  time  into  England  in  the  days  of  Tradescant, 
"  King's  Gardener"  to  Charles  I. ;  and  it  is  believed  to 
have  been  shown  in  Tradescant's  Museum,  at  South  Lam- 
beth, as  a  curious  product,  under  the  name  of  Mazer- 
wood,  of  which  bowls  and  goblets  were  formerly  made. 
Subsequently  it  was  often  brought  from  China  and  other 
parts  of  the  East,  in  the  form  of  elastic  whips,  sticks,  etc. 
The  specimens  of  two  centuries  since  probably  lay  in 
Tradescant's  Museum  neglected,  and  the  knowledge  of 
its  importance  and  value  in  the  arts  seems  to  have  been 
reserved  for  the  age  of  the  Electric  Telegraph,  since  the 
use  of  this  substance  for  inclosing  its  metallic  wires  en- 
titles it  to  a  share  in  the  success  of  the  Submarine  Tele- 
graph, by  means  of  which  the  great  cities  of  the  world 
are  now  brought  within  a  few  minutes  of  each  other. 

The  reappearance  of  Gutta  Percha  in  our  times  resem- 
bles a  rediscovery.  It  is  obtained  from  the  Isonandra 
Gutta  plant,  of  the  order  Sapotacece^  and  was  found  by 
Mr.  Thomas  Lobb  while  on  a  botanical  mission  in  Singa- 
pore and  the  Malay  peninsula,  where  forests  of  the  Percha 
trees  grow  to  an  enormous  size,  this  discovery  being 
made  more  than  three  Centuries  after  the  country  had 
been  frequented  by  Europeans.  Early  in  1843,  Dr. 
William  Montgomerie,  in  a  letter  to  the  Bengal  Medical 
Board,  commends  Gutta  Percha  as  likely  to  prove  useful 
for  some  surgical  purposes;  and  in  the  same  year  he 
transmitted  to  the  Society  of  Arts  in  London  a  specimen 
of  the  Gutta  Percha,  at  one  of  their  evening  meetings : 
the  Society  then  simply  acknowledged  the  receipt  of  the 
gift,  but  subsequently  presented  to  Dr.  Montgomerie 
their  gold  medal.  It  was  ascertained  from  Sir  James 
Brook,  the  Resident  at  Sarawak,  that  the  tree  is  indige- 
nous to  that  place,  and  is  known  to  the  natives  by  the 
name  of  Niato;  and  the  doctor's  curiosity  was  first 


GUTTA   PJERCHA.  453 

aroused  by  noticing  the  handle  of  a  chopper  in  the  hands 
of  a  Malay  woodman  made  of  this  novel  material,  which 
he  found  could  be  moulded  into  any  form  by  immersing 
it  into  boiling  water  until  it  was  thoroughly  heated,  when 
it  became  plastic  as  clay,  and  regained  when  cold  its 
original  hardness  and  rigidity.  In  its  native  country  it 
is  commonly  used  for  whips,  and  it  was  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  horsewhip  made  of  this  substance  that  its  exist- 
ence was  made  known  in  Europe.  Specimens  shown  in 
the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851  proved  that  the  Malays 
knew  also  how  to  appropriate  Gutta  Percha  to  the  man- 
ufacture of  vases,  and  that  European  industry  had  little 
more  to  do  than  to  imitate  their  processes.  The  first 
articles  manufactured  of  it  in  England,  in  1844,  were  a 
lathe-band,  a  short  length  of  pipe,  and  a  bottle-case, 
which  had  been  made  by  hand,  the  concrete  substance 
being  rendered  sufficiently  plastic  by  immersion  in  hot 
water ;  casts  from  medals  were  also  early  taken  with  it. 
Mr.  Francis  Whishaw  thus  early  discovered  the  valuable 
property  which  Gutta  Percha  possesses  for  the  convey- 
ance of  sound,  and  accordingly  made  of  it  the  Telakou- 
phanon,  or  Speaking  Trumpet,  through  which,  by  simply 
whispering,  the  voice  could  be  audibly  conducted  for  a 
distance  of  three  quarters  of  a  mile,  and  a  conversation 
by  this  means  kept  up.  Another  of  its  early  applications 
was  as  the  soles  of  shoes.  In  its  pure  state,  Gutta  Percha 
is  indestructible  by  water,  and  is  an  excellent  non-con- 
ductor of  electricity ;  hence  it  was  used  in  making  a  tube 
for  the  conveyance  of  the  wires  of  the  submarine  tele- 
graph, and  was  first  so  employed  across  the  Hudson 
River,  New  York. 

Gutta  Percha  is,  like  Caoutchouc,  a  carburet  of  hydro- 
gen, and  isomeric  with  that  substance ;  and  while  it  pos- 
sesses a  great  number  of  the  properties  which  character- 
ize Caoutchouc,  it  also  exhibits  certain  special  properties 
which  admit  of  its  being  applied  to  particular  uses  to 
which  Caoutchouc  is  not  adapted. 

In  1845,  only  20,000  Ibs.  of  Gutta  Percha  were  import- 
ed into  England ;  now  the  consumption  has  increased  to 
millions  of  pounds  annually.  Its  manufacture  into  an 
endless  variety  of  articles  demands  new  processes,  new 
machines,  and  new  tools,  in  which  the  steam-engine  plays 


454  USES  OF  GUTTA  PEKCHA. 

the  most  important  part.  The  rough  blocks  of  gum  are 
first  cut  into  slices  by  a  vertical  wheel,  faced  with  knives 
or  blades,  and  revolving  200  times  a  minute ;  the  slices 
are  then  cleaned  from  stones  and  other  impurities,  and 
boiled  in  waste  steam  from  the  engine.  The  mass  is 
next  put  into  an  iron  box,  or  teaser,  in  which  an  iron 
cylinder  with  teeth  rapidly  revolves,  and  tears  it  into 
shreds,  throwing  it  into  vats  of  cold  water.  There  the 
Gutta  Percha  floats  at  the  top,  and  the  impurities  sink 
to  the  bottom.  It  is  then  transferred  to  tanks  of  boiling 
water,  and  thence  removed  into  boxes,  and  kneaded  like 
dough ;  and  next  rolled  between  heated  iron  cylinders 
into  sheets,  which  are  then  cooled  by  passing  between 
steel  rollers.  The  sheets  are  cut  by  a  knife-edged  ma- 
chine into  bands  or  strips.  For  making  tubes  and  pipes, 
the  soft  mass  of  kneaded  Gutta  Percha  is  passed  through 
heated  iron  cylinders,  and  is  drawn  by  the  drawing-mill 
into  cylindrical  cords,  and  tubes  of  various  diameters. 
This,  however,  is  but  a  glimpse  of  the  complicated  ma- 
chinery and  processes  by  which  Gutta  Percha  is  fash- 
ioned into  a  legion  of  articles.  Among  the  applications 
are  breast-coating  for  water-wheels,  galvanic  batteries, 
shuttle-beds  for  looms,  packing  for  steam-engines  and 
pumps,  cricket-balls,  noiseless  curtain-rings,  whips  and 
sticks,  policemen's  staves,  plugs  or  solid  masses  used  in 
buildings,  bufiers  for  railway-carriages,  gunpowder  can- 
isters, sheet-covering  for  damp  walls,  lining  for  ladies' 
bonnets,  jar-covers,  bobbins  for  spinning  machines,  book- 
covers,  moulds  for  stereotype  and  electrotype,  coffin-lin- 
ings, and  stopping  for  hollow  teeth.  These  are  but  a 
small  number  of  the  myriads  of  uses  to  which  we  have 
extended  the  application  of  the  vegetable  product  which 
was  used  by  the  Malays  ages  since  for  a  few  common 
purposes. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  add  that  both  Gutta  Percha 
and  Caoutchouc  plants  may  be  seen  growing  in  the  Roy- 
al Gardens  of  Kew,  and  cases  of  articles  made  of  the  two 
substances  are  shown  there  in  the  Museum  of  Economic 
Botany. 

In  estimating  the  various  aids  and  appliances  to  the 
success  of  the  Submarine  Telegraph,  it  is  scarcely  possi- 
ble to  overrate  the  properties  of  Gutta  Percha.  It  would 


GUTTA  PEKCHA  AND  ELECTRICITY.         455 

seem  as  though  one  were  sent  to  perfect  the  other ;  for 
the  coating  of  the  telegraph-wire  with  Gutta  Percha, 
thereby  insuring  its  entire  insulation,  is  a  most  import- 
ant provision. 

The  employment  of  Gutta  Percha  in  electrical  experi- 
ments was  first  noticed  by  Faraday  in  1848,  who  stated 
its  use  to  depend  upon  the  high  insulating  power  which 
it  possesses  under  ordinary  conditions,  and  the  manner 
in  which  it  keeps  this  power  in  states  of  the  atmosphere 
which  make  the  surface  of  glass  a  good  conductor.  The 
telegraph-wire  is  not  only  coated  with  Gutta  Percha, 
but  is  closed  in  tubing  made  of  it.  For  this  purpose  the 
Gutta  is  dissolved  in  bisulphuret  of  carbon ;  the  wire  is 
passed  over  pulleys  through  the  solution,  and  then  through 
a  tube  lined  with  brushes,  which  remove  any  thing  super- 
fluous ;  and  when  the  wire  reaches  the  second  pulley,  the 
bisulphuret  has  evaporated,  and  left  a  thin  coating  of 
Gutta  Percha.  Where  the  wire  is  to  be  roughly  handled, 
it  is  covered  with  cotton,  and  then  passed  through  the 
solution ;  but  the  tubing  is  still  more  effective.  Great 
feats  of  dispatch  have  been  accomplished  in  this  applica- 
tion. One  day,  in  1849,  a  coil  of  copper  wire  12,200  feet 
long  was  coated  at  the  Company's  works  in  the  City 
Road  with  sulphureted  Gutta  Percha,  and  shipped  for 
the  Russian  government,  within  twenty-four  hours  of  its 
arrival  at  the  works. 


THE  ELECTEIC  TELEGEAPH. 

THE  great  secret  of  instantaneous  transmission  has 
long  exercised  the  ingenuity  of  mankind  in  various  ro- 
mantic myths;  and  the  discovery  of  certain  properties 
of  the  loadstone  gave  a  new  direction  to  those  fancies, 
the  majority  of  which  can  scarcely  be  traced.  Many  of 
the  ancient  stories  of  ubiquity  which  we  find  related  as 
facts  are  doubtless  of  this  fabulous  origin ;  and  in  the 
present  instance,  credulity  being,  as  it  were,  backed  by 
science,  there  was  some  method  in  the  popular  belief. 
To  such  a  source  may  be  traced  in  modern  times  the 
earliest  anticipation  of  the  Electric  Telegraph,  the  mar- 
vel of  the  science  of  the  present  age ;  the  discoveries  in 
which,  and  their  application  to  useful  ends  almost  as  soon 
as  made,  give  this  science  a  peculiar  interest.  The  an- 
ticipation to  which  we  have  just  referred  occurs  in  the 
Prolusiones  of  the  learned  Italian  Jesuit  Strada  in  1617, 
who  supposes  the  existence  of  "  a  species  of  loadstone 
which  possesses  such  virtue  that  if  two  needles  be  touch- 
ed with  it,  and  then  balanced  on  separate  pivots,  and  the ' 
one  be  turned  in  a  particular  direction,  the  other  will 
sympathetically  move  parallel  to  it."  He  then  directs 
each  of  these  needles  to  be  poised  and  mounted  parallel 
on  a  dial  having  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  arranged 
round  it.  Accordingly,  if  one  person  has  one  of  the  dials 
and  another  the  other,  by  a  little  prearrangement  as  to 
details,  a  correspondence  can  be  maintained  between 
them  at  any  distance  by  simply  pointing  the  needles  to 
the  letters  of  the  required  words.  Strada,  in  his  poet- 
ical reverie,  dreamed  that  some  such  sympathy  might 
one  day  be  found  to  exist  in  1>he  magnet ;  but  his  conceit 
does  not  seem  to  have  caugFft  Bishop  Wilkins,  who,  in 
his  book  on  Cryptology,  strangely  fears  lest  his  readers 
should  mistake  Strada's  fancy  for  fact,  it  being  altogether 
imaginary,  having  no  foundation  in  any  real  experiment. 

Addison,  in  the  241st  number  of  the  Spectator,  1712,  describes 
Strada's  "Chimerical  correspondence;"  and  adds  that,  "if  ever  this 


EXPERIMENTS   IN   ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHY.  457 

invention  should  be  revived  or  put  in  practice,"  he  "would  propose 
that  upon  the  lover's  dial-plate  there  should  be  written  not  only  the 
four-and-twenty  letters,  but  several  entire  words  which  have  always  a 
place  in  passionate  epistles,  as  flames,  darts,  die,  language,  absence, 
Cupid,  heart,  eyes,  being,  drown,  and  the  like.  This  would  very  much 
abridge  the  lover's  pains  in  this  way  of  writing  a  letter,  as  it  would 
enable  him  to  express  the  most,  useful  and  significant  words  with  a 
single  touch  of  the  needle." 

When  electricians  had  become  acquainted  with  the 
new  force  by  friction,  then  the  only  known  method  of 
generating  electricity,  they  renewed  their  experiments. 
In  1729,  one  Stephen  Gray,  a  pensioner  of  the  Charter 
House,  made  electrical  signals  through  a  wire  765  feet 
long ;  yet,  in  those  dull  times,  this  success  did  not  excite 
much  attention.  Next,  Le  Monnier's  account  of  his  feel- 
ing the  electric  shock  through  an  acre  of  water  at  Paris 
by  means  of  an  iron  chain,  led  Dr.  Watson,  and  other 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  in  1745,  to  make  a  series 
of  experiments  to  ascertain  how  far  electricity  could  be 
conveyed  by  means  of  conductors. 

They  caused  the  shock  to  pass  across  the  Thames  at  Westminster 
Bridge,  the  circuit  being  completed  by  making  use  of  the  river  for 
one  part  of  the  chain  of  communication.  One  end  of  the  wire  com- 
municated with  the  coating  of  a  charged  phial,  the  other  being  held 
by  the  observer,  who  in  his  other  hand  held  an  iron  rod,  which  he 
dipped  into  the  river.  On  the  opposite  side  of  the  river  stood  a  gen- 
tleman, who  likewise  dipped  an  iron  rod  in  the  river  with  one  hand, 
and  in  the  other  held  a  wire,  the  extremity  of  which  might  be  brought 
into  contact  with  the  wire  of  the  phial.  Upon  making  the  discharge, 
the  shock  was  felt  simultaneously  by  both  the  observers. — PRIESTLEY'S 
History  of  Electricity.  v 

In  1747,  the  same  persons  made  experiments  near 
Shooter's  Hill,  when  the  wires  formed  a  circuit  of  four 
miles,  and  conveyed  the  shock  with  equal  facility;  "a 
distance  which,  without  trial,"  they  observed,  "  was  too 
great  to  be  credited."  Thes.e  results  established  two 
great  principles :  1,  that  the>  electric  current  is  transmis- 
sible along  nearly  two  miks  and  a  half  of  iron  wire ;  2, 
that  the  electric  current  it*ay  be  completed  by  burying 
the  poles  in  the  earth  at  the  above  distance.  These  ex- 
periments were  performed  at  the  expense  of  the  Royal 
Society,  and  cost  £10  5s.  6d.  In  the  paper  detailing 
them,  printed  in  the  45th  volume  of  the  Philosophical 
Transactions,  occurs  the  first  mention  of  Dr.  Franklin's 

U 


458  EXPERIMENTS    IN   ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHY. 

name,  and  of  his  theory  of  positive  and  negative  elec- 
tricity. 

In  the  following  year,  1748,  Benjamin  Franklin  per- 
formed his  celebrated  experiments  on  the  banks  of  the 
Schuylkill,  near  Philadelphia,  which  being  interrupted 
by  the  hot  weather,  they  were  concluded  by  a  picnic, 
when  spirits  were  fired  by  an  electric  spark  sent  through 
a  wire  in  the  river,  and  a  turkey  was  killed  by  the  elec- 
tric shock,  and  roasted  by  the  electric  jack  before  a  fire 
kindled  by  the  electrified  bottle.  In  two  years  Franklin 
made  his  more  celebrated  experiment  to  determine  the 
identity  of  Lightning  and  Electricity,  as  described  at  p. 
336,  33V. 

In  the  year  1753  there  appeared  in  the  Scots'  Magazine 
definite  proposals  for  the  construction  of  an  electric  tele- 
graph requiring  as  many  conducting  wires  as  there  are 
letters  in  the  alphabet ;  it  was  also  proposed  to  converse 
by  chimes,  by  substituting  bells  for  the  balls.  A  similar 
system  of  telegraphing  was  next  invented  by  Joseph 
Bozolus,  a  Jesuit,  at  Rome,  and  mentioned  by  the  great 
Italian  electrician  Tiberius  Cavallo,  in  his  treatise  on 
Electricity. 

In  1787,  Arthur  Young,  when  traveling  in  France,  saw 
a  model  working  telegraph  by  M.  Lomond :  "You  write 
two  or  three  words  on  a  paper,"  says  Young ;  "  he  takes 
it  with  him  into  a  room,  and  turns  a  machine  inclosed  in 
a  cylindrical  case,  at  the  top  of  which  is  an  electrometer, 
a  small,  fine  pith-ball ;  a  wire  connects  with  a  similar 
cylinder  and  electrometer  in  a  distant  apartment;  and 
his  wife,  by  remarking  the  corresponding  motions  of  the 
ball,  writes  down  the  words  they  indicate,  from  which  it 
appears  that  he  has  formed  an  alphabet  of  motions.  As 
the  length  of  the  wire  makes  no  difference  in  the  effect, 
a  correspondence  might  be  carried  on  at  any  distance." 

On  January  31,  1793,  Volta  announced  to  the  Royal 
Society  his  discovery  of  the  development  of  electricity 
in  metallic  bodies.  Galvani  had  given  the  name  of  An- 
imal Electricity  to  the  power  which  caused  spontaneous 
convulsions  in  the  limbs  of  frogs  when  the  divided  nerves 
were  connected  by  a  metallic  wire.  Yolta,  however,  saw 
the  true  cause  of  the  phenomena  described  by  Galvani, 
which  have  passed  under  his  name  as  Galvanism  by  an 


EXPERIMENTS    IN    ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHY.  459 

error  similar  to  that  which  gave  the  name  of  Amerigo 
Vespucci,  instead  of  Columbus,  as  the  discoverer  of  the 
New  World.  Observing  that  the  effects  were  far  greater 
when  the  connecting  medium  consisted  of  two  different 
kinds  of  metal,  Volta  inferred  that  the  principle  of  ex- 
citation existed  in  the  metals,  and  not  in  the  nerves  of 
the  animal ;  and  he  assumed  that  the  exciting  fluid  was 
ordinary  electricity,  produced  by  the  contact  of  the  two 
metals.  The  convulsions  of  the  frog  consequently  arose 
from  the  electricity  thus  developed  passing  along  its 
nerves  and  muscles.  Hence  the  term  Voltaic  Electricity. 

The  following  year,  according  to  Voigfs  Magazine, 
Reizen  made  use  of  the  electric  spark  for  the  telegraph ; 
and  in  1798,  Dr.  Salva,  of  Madrid,  constructed  a  similar 
telegraph,  which  the  Prince  of  Peace  exhibited  to  the 
King  of  Spain  with  great  success. 

In  1802  it  was  discovered  that  the  earth  might  be  sub- 
stituted for  the  return  wire  of  a  voltaic  circuit. 

In  1809,  Soemmering  exhibited  to  the  Academy  of 
Sciences  at  Munich  an  electro-telegraphic  apparatus,  in 
which  the  mode  of  signaling  consisted  in  the  develop- 
ment of  gas-bubbles  from  the  decomposition  of  water 
placed  in  a  series  of  glass  tubes,  each  of  which  denoted  a 
letter  of  the  alphabet.  In  1813,  Mr.  Hill,  of  Alfreton,  in 
Hampshire,  devised  a  voltaic,  electric  telegraph,  which  he 
exhibited  to  the  Lords  of  the  Admiralty,  who  spoke  ap- 
provingly of  it,  but  declined  to  carry  it  into  effect.  And 
in  the  following  year  Soemmering  constructed  a  similar 
telegraph,  but  with  this  inconvenience — that  there  were 
as  many  wires  as  signs  or  .letters  of  the  alphabet. 

The  next  invention  is  of  much  greater  practical  worth. 
Upon  the  suggestion  of  Cavallo,  Francis  Ronalds  con- 
structed a  perfect  electric  telegraph,  employing  frictional 
electricity,  although  Volta's  discoveries  had  been  known 
in  England  for  sixteen  years.  This  telegraph  was  ex- 
hibited at  Hammersmith  in  1816,  the  very  year  in  which 
Andrew  Crosse,  the  electrician,  said,  "I  prophesy  that 
by  means  of  the  electric  agency  we  shall  be  enabled  to 
communicate  our  thoughts  instantaneously  with  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth."  Ronald's  telegraph  con- 
sisted of  a  single  insulated  wire,  the  indication  being  by 
pith-balls  in  front  of  a  dial :  when  the  wire  was  charged 


460  OERSTED'S  ELECTKO-MAGNETISM. 

the  balls  were  divergent,  but  collapsed  when  the  wire 
was  discharged;  at  the  same  time  were  employed  two 
clocks  with  lettered  disks  for  the  signals.  Ronald's 
success  was  complete ;  nevertheless,  the  government  of 
the  day  refused  to  avail  itself  of  his  telegraph. 

In  1819,  Professor  Oersted,  of  Copenhagan,  who  had 
for  some  years  asserted  the  identity  of  chemical  and  elec- 
trical forces,  announced  his  great  discovery  of  the  inti- 
mate relation  existing  between  magnetism  and  electricity, 
in  consequence  of  his  having,  while  lecturing  to  his  class, 
observed  that  a  magnet,  when  placed  near  a  wire  con- 
ducting a  voltaic  current,  was  strangely  deflected.  And 
upon  the  Copley  Medal  being  adjudicated  to  Oersted  for 
his  discovery,  he  demonstrated  that  "  there  is  always  a 
magnetic  circulation  round  the  electric  conductor ;  and 
that  the  electric  current,  in  accordance  with  a  certain 
law,  always  exercises  determined  and  similar  impressions 
on  the  direction  of  the  magnetic  needle,  even  when  it 
does  not  pass  through  the  needle,- but  near  it."  Thus 
Oersted  laid  the  foundations  of  the  science  of  electro- 
magnetism,  and  led  the  way  to  its  practical  application 
to  the  Electric  Telegraph,  although,  in  the  popular  ac- 
counts of  the  invention,  we  hear  much  more  of  the  adapt- 
ers of  his  researches  than  of  Oersted  himself,  to  whom 
the  main  merit  is  due.  "Nothing,"  says  Professor 
Owen,  "  might  seem  less  promising  of  profit  than  Oer- 
sted's painfully-pursued  experiments  with  his  little  mag- 
nets, voltaic  pile,  and  bits  of  copper  wire,  yet  out  of  these 
has  sprung  the  Electric  Telegraph." 

Dr.  Hamel,  of  St.  Petersburg,  states  that  Baron  Schil- 
ling was  the  first  to  apply  Oersted's  discovery  to  tele- 
graphy by  actually  producing  an  electro-magnetic  tele- 
graph simpler  in  construction  than  that  which  Ampere 
had  imagined. 

Sturgeon  next  conceived  the  idea  of  involving  soft 
iron  with  copper  wire,  and,  by  circulating  voltaic  elec- 
tricity through  these  convolutions,  of  rendering  it  power- 
fully magnetic.  The  experiment  proved  the  correctness 
of  the  thought,  and  electro-magnets  of  enormous  power 
have  been  the  result.  These  have  enabled  Faraday  to 
discover  and  enunciate  the  laws  of  voltaic  and  magneto- 
electric  induction.  Light  and  magnetism  are  proved  to 


WHEATSTONE  AND  COOKE's    ELECTRIC  TELEGRAPH.    461 

be  mysteriously  related,  and  all  bodies  in  nature  have 
been  shown  to  exist  in  one  of  two  conditions — they  are 
either  magnetic,  as  iron  is,  or  they  are  dia-magnetic,  like 
bismuth  and  glass.  . 

In  1835,  Gauss  and  Weber  established  electro-tele- 
graphic communication  between  the  Observatory  at 
Gottingen  and  the  University.  In  Professor  Airy's  ex- 
periments with  the  Electric  Telegraph,  several  years 
after,  to  determine  the  difference  of  longitude  between 
Greenwich  and  Brussels,  the  time  spent  by  the  electric 
current  in  passing  from  one  observatory  to  the  other 
(270  miles)  was  found  to  be  rather  more  than  the  ninth 
part  of  a  second,  this  determination  resting  on  2616  ob- 
servations. Such  a  speed  would  "girdle  the  globe"  in 
ten  seconds.  During  all  this  time  the  Voltaic  Battery 
was  gradually  improved,  and  its  powers  vastly  augment- 
ed, by  Daniell  and  Grove. 

In  1836,  Professor  Muncke,  of  Heidelberg,  who  had 
inspected  Schilling's  telegraphic  apparatus,  explained  the 
same  to  William  Fothergill  Cooke,  who  in  the  following 
year  returned  to  England,  and  subsequently,  with  Profess- 
or Wheatstone,  labored  simultaneously  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  Electro-magnetic  Telegraph  upon  the  English 
railways,  the  first  patent  for  which  was  taken  out  in  the 
joint  names  of  these  two  gentlemen. 

In  1844,  Professor  Wheatstone,  with  one  of  his  tele- 
graphs, formed  a  communication  between  King's  College 
and  the  lofty  shot-tower  on  the  opposite  bank  of  the 
Thames :  the  wire  was  laid  along  the  parapets  of  the 
terrace  of  Somerset  House  and  Waterloo  Bridge,  and 
thence  to  the  top  of  the  tower,  about  150  feet  high, 
where  a  telegraph  was  placed ;  the  wire  then  descended, 
and  a  plate  of  zinc  attached  to  its  extremity  was  plunged 
into  the  mud  of  the  river,  while  a  similar  plate  attached 
to  the  extremity  at  the  north  side  was  immersed  in  the 
water.  The  circuit  was  thus  completed  by  the  entire 
breadth  of  the  Thames,  and  the  telegraph  acted  as  well 
as  if  the  the  circuit  were  entirely  metallic.  Shortly  after 
this  experiment,  Professor  Wheatstone  and  Mr.  Cooke 
laid  down  the  first  working  Electric  Telegraph  on  the 
Great  Western  Railway,  from  Paddington  to  Slough. 

In  1845,  by  the  Electric  Telegraph,  then  laid  from  Paddington  to 


462  THE   SUBMAEINE   ELECTRIC   TELEGRAPH. 

the  Slough  Station,  on  the  Great  Western  Railway,  John  Tawell  was 
captured  on  suspicion  of  having  murdered  Sarah  Hart  at  Salt  Hill  on 
Jan.  1 .  Tawell  left  Slough  by  the  railway  on  that  evening ;  and  at 
the  same  instant,  by  Telegraph,  his  person  was  described,  with  instruc- 
tions to  the  police  to  watch  him  on  his  arrival  at  Paddington.  Thus, 
while  the  suspected  man  was  on  his  way  to  London  at  a  fast  rate,  the 
Telegraph,  with  still  greater  rapidity,  sent  along  the  wire  which  skirts 
the  road  the  startling  instructions  for  his  capture  ;  and  in  the  metrop- 
olis he  was  followed,  apprehended,  and  identified.  This  early  em- 
ployment of  the  Telegraph  produced  in  the  public  mind  an  intense 
conviction  of  the  vast  utility  of  this  novel  application  of  man's  philos- 
ophy to  the  protection  of  his  race. 

The  first  newspaper  report  by  Electric  Telegraph  appeared  in  the 
Morning  Chronicle,  May  8,  1845,  detailing  a  railway  meeting  held  at 
Portsmouth  on  the  preceding  evening.  On  April  10,  in  the  same 
year,  a  game  of  chess  was  played  by  Electric  Telegraph  between 
Captain  Kennedy,  at  the  Southwestern  Railway  terminus,  and  Mr. 
Staunton,  at  Gosport:  the  mode  of  playing  was  by  numbering  the 
squares  of  the  chess-board  and  the  men  ;  and  in  conveying  the  moves, 
the  electricity  traveled  backward  and  forward  during  the  game  upward 
of  10,000  miles. 

On  Nov.  13, 1851,  the  Submarine  Electric  Telegraph  between  Dover 
and  Calais  was  first  worked  for  the  public ;  and  the  opening  and  clos- 
ing prices  of  the  Paris  Bourse  were  transmitted  to  the  Stock  Ex- 
change, London,  during  business  hours. 

In  America,  the  Submarine  Electric  Telegraph  was  in- 
vented by  Professor  Morse,  who,  in  1822,  while  on  his 
passage  from  Liverpool  to  New  York,  maintained  the 
passage  of  electricity  through  wire  to  be  instantaneous 
to  any  distance,  and  that  it  might  be  made  the  means 
of  conveying  and  recording  intelligence.  For  thirteen 
years  he  pursued  his  experiments,  and  in  1835  patented 
his  "  Recording  Electric  Telegraph,"  in  the  same  year 
that  Wheatstone  in  England,  and  Steinheil  in  Bavaria, 
invented  a  Magnetic  Telegraph  of  entirely  different  con- 
struction. Morse  uses  the  steel  point  for  indenting  the 
paper,  and  renders  the  instrument  more  powerful  and 
certain  by  substituting  electro -magnets  for  needles. 
Morse  next  attempted  Submarine  Telegraphing  between 
Governor's  Island  and  Castle  Garden,  New  York ;  and 
in  October,  1842,  interchanged  messages,  and  laid  the 
first  cable  of  copper  wire,  one  twelfth  of  an  inch  in  di- 
ameter, insulated  by  hemp  coated  with  tar,  pitch/  and 
India-rubber.  From  this  success  Morse  inferred  that  a 
telegraphic  communication  upon  his  plan  might  be  estab- 
lished across  the  Atlantic.  In  1844  he  completed  the 


THE    ATLANTIC   TELEGRAPH.  403 

lirst  Electric  Telegraph  in  the  United  States,  and  in  1856 
his  claim  to  the  invention  of  the  writing  apparatus  was 
accorded. 

Before  the  Atlantic  Telegraph  was  finally  decided  on 
here,  2000  miles  of  subterranean  and  submarine  telegraph 
wires,  ramifying  through  England  and  Ireland,  under  the 
Irish  Sea,  were  connected,  and  through  this  distance  of 
2000  miles  250  distinct  signals  were  recorded  and  print- 
ed in  one  minute.  In  1857  the  Atlantic  Cable  was  com- 
pleted, the  length  of  iron  and  copper  wire  spun  into  it 
being  332,500  miles,  or  sufficient  to  engirdle  the  earth 
thirteen  times :  the  cable  weighed  about  a  ton  per  mile, 
and  was  incased  in  Gutta  Percha.  A  submarine  cable, 
when  in  the  water,  is  virtually  a  lengthened-out  Leyden 
jar;  it  transmits  signals  while  being  charged  and  dis- 
charged, instead  of  merely  allowing  a  single  stream' to 
flow  evenly  along  it.  The  electro-magnetic  current 
possesses  treble  the  velocity  of  simple  voltaic  electricity ; 
and  with  a  single  pair  of  zinc  and  silver  plates  (l-20th  of 
a  square  inch  large),  charged  by  a  single  drop  of  liquid, 
distinct  signals  have  been  effected  through  1000  miles 
of  the  cable,  and  each  signal  was  registered  in  less  than 
three  seconds  of  time.  The  Perpetual  Maintenance  Bat- 
tery, for  working  the  cable  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  con- 
sisted of  large  plates  of  platinated  silver  and  amalgamated 
zinc,  mounted  in  ten  cells  of  Gutta  Percha,  each  cell  con- 
taining 2000  square  inches  of  acting  surface,  worked  at 
the  cost  of  one  shilling  per  hour.  This  voltaic  current 
was  the  primary  power  used  to  call  up  a  more  speedy 
apparatus  of  "  Double  Induction  Coils,"  while  a  fresh 
battery  did  the  printing  labor.*  The  attempts  to  lay 
this  cable  in  August,  1857,  failed  through  stretching  it 
so  tightly  that  it  snapped  and  went  to  the  bottom,  at  a 
depth  of  12,000  feet,  forty  times  the  height  of  St.  Paul's. 
The  cause  of  this  failure  was  frankly  confessed.  "The 
best  workmen,"  said  the  engineers,  "  were  worn  out  with 
fatigue ;  the  second-best  took  their  places,  and  put  on 
the  brakes  unskillfully ;  the  cable  snapped ;  and  that  is 
the  long  and  short  of  the  matter." 

This  great  work  was  resumed  in  August,  1858,  and  on 
the  5th  the  first  signals  were  received  through  two  thou- 
*  By  Mr.  Wildman  Whitehonsc,  the  eminent  electrician. 


464  THE  ATLANTIC  TELEGRAPH. 

sand  and  fifty  miles  of  the  Atlantic  Cable,  when  the  eu- 
gineer-in-chief,  Mr.  Charles  Bright,  was  knighted.  And 
it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  just  111  years  previously,  on 
the  5th  of  August,  1747,  Dr.  Watson  astonished  the  sci- 
entific world  by  practically  proving  that  the  electric  cur- 
rent could  be  transmitted  through  a  wire  hardly  two 
miles  and  a  half  long. 

The  success,  however,  lasted  but  for  a  few  days,  for  on 
September  1st  the  Cable  ceased  to  work,  and  it  has  con- 
tinued useless  up  to  the  present  time. 

A  little  north  of  the  50th  parallel  of  latitude,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  where  the  plateau  is  unbroken  by  any  great  depres- 
sion, and  on  a  soft  bed  of  mud,  constantly  thickening,  and  composed 
almost  entirely  of  carbonate  of  lime,  there  lies  now  some  1500  miles 
of  disabled  telegraphic  cable,  deposited  in  the  summer  of  1858,  at  a 
depth  varying  from  10,000  to  15,000  feet.  The  wire  was  sufficiently 
thick  to  resist  any  strain  it  was  thought  likely  to  have  to  bear. 
Whether,  however,  it  may  not,  where  partially  injured,  have  become 
melted  by  the  intense  heat  evolved  during  the  passage  of  magnetic 
storms  through  the  earth,  and  even  of  the  strong  magnetic  currents 
employed  in  communicating  the  early  messages,  is  a  question  that  has 
not  yet  been  answered ;  but,  at  any  rate,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree 
probable  that  in  the  course  of  time  the  copper  would  have  become 
reduced  to  the  crystalline  state,  and  the  cohesion  of  the  metal  reduced 
so  as  to  render  it  incapable  of  resisting  even  a  very  small  strain. 
These  and  other  difficulties  may  arise,  and  will  have  to  be  overcome. 
Meanwhile  the  great  problem  of  telegraphy  is  solved.*  The  power 
that  attracts  the  needle  to  the  pole,  and  has  for  centuries  guided  the 
navigator  across  the  surface  of  the  water,  is  now  rendered  available 
in  providing  means  of  communication  through  its  hitherto  unfathom- 
ed  depths,  and  the  girdle  is  being  put  round  the  world  which  will,  at 
no  distant  time,  unite  all  civilized  nations  into  one  great  brotherhood. 
—  Westminster  Review,  October,  1859. 

In  soundings  taken  along  the  telegraph  plateau,  speci- 
mens of  the  animals  and  vegetables  found  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  Atlantic  have  been  brought  up,  of  which  the 

*  The  following  statement  of  the  actual  number  of  messages  that 
passed  across  the  Atlantic  during  the  time  when  the  condition  of  the 
wire  was  still  doubtful,  will  show  clearly  how  complete  was  the  success, 
and  how  great  the  certainty  that  submarine  lines  will  ultimately  be 
laid.  Exclusive  of  conversations  among  the  clerks,  97  messages,  con- 
sisting of  1002  words  and  6476  letters,  were  sent  from  Valentia  to 
Newfoundland,  and  duly  comprehended ;  while  269  messages,  of  2840 
words  and  13,743  letters,  were  received  from  Newfoundland  in  Ire- 
land. This  gives  a  total  of  366  messages,  consisting  of  3942  words, 
made  up  of  20,219  letters,  actually  transmitted.—  West  minster  Review, 
No.  32,  N.  S. 


ELECTRICITY   APPLIED   TO   THE   ARTS. 


465 


accompanying  engraving  represents  a  highly-magnified 
group.  It  includes  Foraminifera,  beings  which  secrete 
many-chambered  calcareous  shells,  each  the  habitation 
of  a  group  of  individuals  so  minute  as  to  require  the^ 
highest  powers  of  the  best  microscope  to  perceive  them. 
With  these  are  intermixed  Diatomacece,  the  simplest 
tribes  of  the  simplest  plants,  whose  remains  form  a  sensi- 
ble proportion  of  the  silicious  part  of  the  ooze  on  which 
the  telegraph  cable  rests. 


Highly-magnified  animals  and  plants  brought  up  from  the  Atlantic  Telegraph 
plateau. 

The  Applications  of  Electricity  to  the  Arts  are  too  numerous  to  be 
specified  here ;  but  a  few  of  the  more  prominent  instances  must  be 
noticed.  The  new  arrangement  of  Franklin's  discovery  by  Sir  Snow 
Harris,  in  lightning  conductors,  has  already  been  mentioned.  The 
firing  of  gunpowder  by  electricity  beneath  the  water,  as  an  agent  in 
blasting  and  exploding,  has  led  to  the  safer  and  more  economical  re- 
covery of  sunken  property,  and  the  execution  of  vast  engineering 
works'.  Hopes  have  been  strongly  excited  that  the  electro-magnetic 
U2 


466  THE   ELECTRO-MAGNETIC   LIGHT. 

current  may  be  so  modified  as  to  act  as  a  moving-power  for  machin- 
ery, and  in  lieu  of  steam,  wind,  water,  and  animal  power ;  locomotive 
carriages  by  land,  and  small  vessels  on  rivers,  have  been  impelled  by 
electro-magnetism,  but  at  too  great  a  cost  for  adoption.  As  the  mov- 
ing power  of  clocks,  electricity  is  employed  with  great  success  for  in- 
dicating exactly  the  same  time  in  any  number  of  places  distant  from 
each  other.  Electro-metallurgy,  or  the  working  in  metals  by  electri- 
cal agency,  was  first  illustrated  by  Professor  Jacobi,  of  St.  Petersburg, 
and  Mr.  Spencer,  of  Liverpool,  and  the  precipitation  of  the  precious 
metals  from  the  solution  led  to  electro  gilding  and  plating,  in  place 
of  the  usual  process  of  gilding  and  plating.  By  this  process  watch- 
springs  are  electro-gilded,  to  prevent  oxydation  ;  and  the  great  metal 
dome  of  St.  Isaac's  Cathedral  at  St.  Petersburg,  which  weighs  nearly 
2000  tons,  has  been  electro-gilded  with  274  Ibs.  of  ducat  gold.  To 
Mr.  Spencer  we  also  owe  the  application  of  electricity  to  the  multi- 
plying copies  of  works  of  art — in  the  electrotype,  a  valuable  improve- 
ment also  upon  stereotype  for  printing  surfaces.  Plates  are  etched 
and  multiplied  by  electricity.  The  uses  of  electricity  as  a  curative 
agent,  or  as  a  means  of  physiological  investigation,  are  very  striking. 
The  electro-luminous  experiments  have  led  to  the  introduction  of  the 
Electric  Light  for  public  purposes ;  but  its  costliness  greatly  restricts 
its  popular  service.  This  wonderful  illuminating  power  has  been 
adapted  to  light-houses ;  and  in  1 859  the  upper  South  Foreland  light- 
house, near  Dover,  was  lighted  by  the  electro-magnetic  light,  by  Pro- 
fessor Holmes.  The  electricity  is  not  evoked  by  a  voltaic  battery, 
but  is  the  result  of  magneto-electric  induction,  the  current  being  ob- 
tained by  about  85  revolutions  per  minute.  The  light  is  visible  for  27 
miles,  and  can  be  seen  from  the  tops  of  the  light-houses  on  the  coast 
of  France. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


ABACUS,  the  Roman,  204. 

Achromatic  glass,  226. 

Adams,  Mr.,  discovers  the  planet  Nep- 
tune, 257. 

JEolopile,  the,  274. 

Aerial  Navigation,  problem  of,  120. 

"Aerial  Ship"  at  New  York,  119. 

Aeronauts,  the  first,  95,  96,  102. 

Aeronaut,  the  first  female,  106. 

Aerostation  first  attempted  in  Scotland, 
105. 

Aerostation,  practical,  105. 

Air-gun,  the,  57. 

Air-pump,  effects  of  the,  55,  56. 

Airy  and  Brewster  on  the  great 
Telescope,  244. 

Albertus  Magnus,  his  Head  of  Brass,  73. 

Altitude,  greatest,  in  a  Balloon,  111. 

Andreani,  the  Italian  aeronaut,  103. 

Applegath   and  Cowper's  Printing 
chines,  41. 

Arago  on  Papin's  Steam  Models,  278. 

Archimedes,  death  of,  IT ;  Inventions  of, 
15 ;  Screw  of,  15,  17. 

Archimedean  Screw  Propeller,  the,  395. 

Architonnere,  by  Archimedes,  131,  273. 

Archytas's  Wooden  Pigeon,  73,  95. 

Aristotle  and  the  Diving-bell,  61. 

Arithmetic,  true  course  of,  200. 

Arithmetical  Machine,  Morland's,  157. 

Arkwright,  Sir  R.,  account  of,  297-301. 

Arnold's  Time-keepers,  178. 

Astley's  Air-balloon,  106. 

Astrology  applied  to  Anatomy  by  Para- 
celsus, 133. 

Atmosphere,  best,  for  telescopic  observa- 
tions, 245. 

Automata,  ancient,  72;  and  Black  Art, 
75. 

Automatic  Actors,  75 ;  Boys,  by  Droz  and 
Maillardet,  78. 

Automaton  Chess-player,  the,  86-92. 

Automaton  Skeleton,  75. 

Automaton  Writer  and  Louis  Philippe, 


Rosse  Beckmann 


BABBAGE'S  Analytical  Engine,  207. 

Babbage's  Difference  Engine,  207. 

Bacon,  Friar,  his  Brazen  Head,  73,  121 ; 
true  history  of,  121. 

Bacon,  Lord,  his  birth  and  boyhood,  141 ; 
his  death  and  will,  144;   Diving-m 
chine,  62;    "New  Philosophy,"   141- 
145 ;  his  Novum  Oryanum,  142. 


Bacon,  Roger,  and  Diving-machine,  62 : 
Flying-machine,  95;  Gunpowder,  46, 
124;  his  inventions,  124;  at  Oxford, 
122;  Pope  Clement  IV.,  123;  the  Tele- 
scope, 212 ;  writings  of,  125,  126. 

Baconian  Philosophy,  its  value,  144,  145. 

Balloon  Ascent,  extraordinary,  110;  the 
first,  100;  first  in  England,  104;  Lana, 
96;  Observations,  scientific,  111,  112; 
Voyage,  first  in  England,  106,  107. 

Balloons  in  Military  Operations,  109, 110. 

Balloons  by  the  Montgolfiers,  99-103. 

Barometer,  the,  invented,  50. 

Beaufoy  and  Graham's  Balloon,  112. 

Beckmann  and  Brewster  on  Automatic 


Statues,  72,  73. 

Beckmann  on  Rupert's  Drops,  152. 
Beer-engine,  Bramah's  patent,  371. 
Bell's  "  Aerial  Machine,"  119. 


Ma-  Bernal  Collection,  Palissy  Ware  in,  265. 

Bidder,  Mr.  George,  and  Mental  Calcula- 
tion, 198-203 ;  reminiscences,  201-203. 

Biot  on  the  action  of  Fluids  on  Light, 
250. 

Black,  Joseph,  the  chemist,  340,  341. 

Blanchard  and  Garnerin's  Parachutes, 
115. 

Blanchard  and  Jefferies  cross  the  English 
Channel  in  a  balloon,  107. 

Blasco  de  Garay's  Steam-machine,  275. 

Block  Machinery,  by  Brunei,  396,  397. 

Block  Printing,  ancient,  30. 

Blood,  Circulation  of  the,  181 ;  its  Cause, 
hypothesis  of,  186 ;  its  Course,  184, 185. 

Bontemps's  Optical  Glass,  229. 

Borelli's  Diving-machines,  64. 

Boulton,  Mr.,  constructs  a  Balloon,  104; 
Watt's  partner,  287. 

Bramah,  Joseph,  Inventions  of,  370-372; 
Hydraulic  press,  371 ;  Locks,  370. 

Brancas's  Steam-machine,  276. 

Brande,  Prof.,  on  Paracelsus,  134. 

Brewster,  Sir  David,  on  the  Automaton 
Chess-player,  89;  his  Kaleidoscope, 
250,  251 ;  on  the  Microscope,  246 ;  on 
Newton's  Principia,  224;  Telescope. 
212. 

Bridge,  the  Menai  Suspension,  374-376. 

Bridgewater  Canal,  the,  363. 

Brindley,  James,  and  Canal  Navigation, 

361-364;  his  mill  machinery,  362. 
a-  Brioschi's  Balloon  Observations,  112. 

British  Association  Balloon  Results,  112. 

Brougham,    Lord,    his    inscription    on 


468 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Watt's    Statue,    294,  295; 
Principia,  224. 


Newton's  Cocking  killed  in  a  Parachute  descent, 
115. 


Brunei,  Sir  I.  M.,  Block  Machinery  and  Columbus    and    the    Variation    of   the 


Thames  Tunnel,  396-401 ;  his  Circular 
Saws,  397,  398;  workshops  at  Batter- 


sea,  398. 

Brunei,  I.  K.,  Eailway  Works  and  Iron 
Steam-ships,  426-431 ;   birth  and  edu- 


Needle,  26. 
Compass,  Discovery  of  the,  25,  26. 


Cotton,  early  use  of,  315,  316 ;  in  Egypt, 
316;  in  the  Middle  Ages,  316;  in  va- 
rious countries,  316. 
cation,  426;  death,  431;  Docks  by,  42T,  Cotton  Manufacture,  the,  296-318;  Ark- 
429 ;   Great  Britain  and  Great  Western     wright's    Patents,    300 ;     Arkwright's 
iron  steam-ships,  429 ;  Great  Eastern, 
430 ;    Great   Western    Railway,   428 ; 
Thames  Tunnel,  427 ;  Thames  Tunnel 
Diving  -  bell,  61 ;     Tubular    Railway 
Bridges,  428. 
Bude  Light,  the,  360. 
Burning  Mirrors,  large,  253-255. 
Burning  Well  at  Wigan,  354. 


CALCULATING   Machines,   various,   204- 

211. 
Calculation,  Mental,  by  Mr.  George  Bid 

der,  198-203. 

Caledonian  Canal  Works,  374. 
Camera  Obscura  invented  by  Leonardo 

da  Vinci,  128. 

Camus,  M.,  his  Automata,  75. 
Canal  Navigation  in  England,  361-364. 
Canals,  invention  of,  361. 
Candle  Bombs,  Hooke  on,  155. 


into  England,  447;  manufactures  by 
Hancock  and  Macintosh,  4-18,  451; 
vulcanized,  450 ;  water-proofing,  449. 

Carcel  and  bis  Lamp,  352. 

Carlingford,  Lord,  his  Aerial  Chariot,  120. 

Cartwright,  Dr.,  his  Power-loom,  311- 
313 ;  his  Steam-carriage,  313. 

Cavendish,  Black,  and  Cavallo  on  Hydro- 
gen, 98. 

Caxton  brings  Printing  into  England 
35;  his  burial-place,  36. 

Century  of  Inventions,  by  the  Marquis 
of  Worcester,  162. 

Chantrey's  Statue  of  James  Watt,  294. 

Char  Volant  and  Kite  Carnage,  119, 120. 


Spinning-frame,  297;  Calico-printing 
and  the  Peels,  313-315;  Cartwright's 
Power -loom,  311;  Cromford  Works, 
300,  301 ;  Crompton,  Samuel,  and  the 
Spinning  -  mule,  302-311;  Crompton, 
neglect  of,  310 ;  Hargreaves1  Spinning- 
jenny,  296 ;  the  Hall-in-the-Wood  de- 
scribed, 305 ;  Hall-in-the-Wood  or  Mus- 
lin Wheel,  307 ;  Kay's  invention,  298  ; 
Kennedy,  Mr.,  on  Crompton's  inven- 
tion, 307;  Need  and  Strutt,  298;  Paul, 
Louis,  and  Wyatt,  John,  306 ;  Peel,  Sir 
R.,  and  Crompton,  309 ;  Peels,  the,  and 
Calico-printing,  313-315 ;  Spinning  Ma-, 
chinery,  316;  Spinning-mule,  Cromp- 
ton's, 309 ;  Spinning  by  Rollers,  300 ; 
Value  of  Manufacture,  317. 
Crompton,  Samuel,  his  family,  302. 

D.EDALTT9,  his  inventions,  72. 


Caoutchouc,  first  known,  447;  introduced  Daguerre  and  the  Diorama,  434.      See 


Photography. 

Dalswinton  Steam-boat  Experiments,  386. 

Davy,  Sir  Humphrey,  and  the  Safety- 
lamp,  343-351 ;  birth  and  boyhood  of, 
343,344;  Chemical  prize,  350;  death 
of,  350 ;  honors  to,  349 ;  Model  Safety- 
lamp,  Davy's,  347 ;  and  Prof.  Faraday, 
350;  at  the  Royal  Institution,  344;  and 
the  Royal  Society,  349;  Safety-lamp, 
by  Clanny,  346;  Stephenson,  347,  348; 
Safety -lamp,  Davy's  theory  of,  346, 
347;  Scottish  estimate,  345;  various 
researches  of,  344,  345. 

De  Caus's  Steam-engine,  275,  276. 

De  Luc's  Balloon  Observations,  111,  112. 


Charles  V.,  Diving  Experiments  before, |DeMorveau  and Bertrand,  the  aeronauts, 
61 ;  patronizes  Automata,  74. 

Charles  H.  wagers  with  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety, 58. 

Charles  and  Robert,  the  aeronauts,  103. 

Chelsea,  Silk  Garden  at,  327. 

Chess-player,  the  Automaton,  86-92. 

Chest,  Carved,  John  Lombe's,  324. 

China,  Gas-lighting  in,  355,  356;  Gun- 
powder in,  43-45 ;  Magnet  known  in, 
22. 

Choke-damp  and  Fire-damp  discovered, 
340-342. 

Chronometer,  the  first  Marine,  176. 

Circulation  of  the  Blood,  181-187. 

"Circulator,"  the  epithet,  184.    - 

Clayton,  Dr.,  his  Gas  Experiments,  354. 

Coal-gas  first  used,  354;  first  used  in 
Balloons,  111. 

Coal  Mines,  Gases  in,  341. 


104. 

De  Rozier  and  D'Arlandes,  the  aeronauts, 
102. 

De  Rozier  and  Remain's  Montgolfier,  107. 

Degennes,  General,  his  Automaton  Pea- 
cock, 76. 

Derby,  Lombe's  Silk-mill  at,  324. 

Diving  Apparatus,  old,  64. 

Diving-bells  in  America,  63 ;  the  earliest, 
61 ;  at  the  Polytechnic  Institution,  59 ; 
principle  and  application  of,  65. 

Diving,  Prof.  Faraday  on,  60. 

Docks  constructed  by  Telford,  374. 

Dollond,  John,  his  Telescope  improve- 
ments, 226. 

Drops,  Rupert's,  submitted  to  the  Royal 
Society,  153. 

Droz's  Automaton  Boys,  78. 

Du  Moulin's  Automata,  76. 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


469 


Dunin,  Count,  his  Expanding  Model,  84. 
Dutens'  Account  of  the  Automaton  Chess. 
player,  ST. 

EAGLE,  artificial,  by  Eegiomontanus,  74. 


Galileo's  blindness,  217 ;  his  first  Survey 
of  the  Heavens,  215,  216;  his  first 
Telescope,  215;  the  invention  of  the 
Telescope,  212-218;  and  the  Pump,  50, 
51. 


Eddystone    Light-house,   the,   built    by  Galley  of  Hiero,  19,  20. 


Smeaton,  366-i 

Egg's  Fish  Balloon,  119. 

Electric  Clocks,  466. 

Electric  Light,  the,  466. 

Electric  Telegraph,  the,  456;  Addison's 
Spectator,  456,  457;  Airy,  Professor, 
461 ;  Atlantic  Cable,  463  ;  Bright,  Sir 
Charles,  464;  Crosse,  Andrew,  459; 
Franklin,  Dr.,  458 ;  Gauss  and  Weber, 


Garnerin's  Balloon  Ascents,  110. 

Gas,  Coal,  process  of  making,  359. 

Gases,  Chemistry  of  the,  340-342. 

Gas-lighting  in  China,  356,  357 ;  Cotton- 
mills,  356;  in  England,  357;  Progress 
of,  357-360. 
Gauging  the  Heavens,"  235. 

Gay-Lussac's  Balloon  Observations,  112. 

Geometry,  uses  of,  20. 


461:   Gray,  Stephen,  457;  Great  West-  George  HI.,  his  munificent  patronage  of 
ern  Telegraph,  461;   Hamel,  Dr.,  460;      Herschel,  237. 

Hill's  Voltaic-electric,  459;    Lomond,  Glass  for  Telescopes,  Guinand's,  226,  227. 
tic,   464  ;  Glass-house,    Prince    Rupert's,  Chelsea, 


M.,   458;     Messages,     Atlantic, 
Morse,  Professor,  462;    Oersted,   Pro- 
fessor,  460;    Ronalds,   Francis,    459; 


150. 
Going  Fusee,  Harrison's,  178. 


Soemmering,  459 ;    Strada's  Prolusio-  Graham,  George,  his  Improvement  of  the 


nes,  456 ;  Sturgeon's  Experiments,  460 ; 
Submarine,  462;  Volta  and  Galvani, 
458;  Watson,  Dr.,  his  Experiments, 


Watch,  170-174. 
Gravatt,  Mr.,  F.R.S.,  and  Scheutz's  Dif- 
ference Engine,  210. 


457;  Wheatstone  and  Cooke,  461;  Wil-  Greek  Fire  and  Gunpowder,  46. 


kins,  Bishop,  456 ;  Young,  Arthur,  458. 
Electricity,  Applications  of,  to  the  Arts, 

465,  466. 

Electro-magnetic  Engine,  466. 
Electro-metallurgy,  466. 
Ellesmere  Canal  Works,  374. 
England,  Printing  brought  into,  35. 
Etruria,  Village  founded  by  Wedgwood, 

271. 
Euler,  his  blindness,  196;  his  Letters  to 


a  German  Princess,  195 ;   his  Powers  Gutta  Percha  and  its  Manufactures,  452 : 


of  Calculation,  196. 
Evelyn  Family's  Gunpowder-mills,  48. 
Evelyn,  John,  visits  Sir  S.  Morland,  156. 

FABKR'S  Speaking  Machine,  82. 
Faenza  Ware  and  Palissy,  261. 


Diving,  60 ;  Optical  Glass-making,  226. 

Felkin,  Mr.,  and  Silk  Culture,  327. 

Fire-engine,  the,  invented,  158. 

Fly,  Iron,  74. 

Flying  Chariot,  Bishop  Wilkins's,  97. 

Flying,  imitative,  95. 

Folly,  Friar  Bacon's,  at  Oxford,  122, 126. 

Framework  Knitters'  Society,  331. 

France,  Printing  introduced  into,  35. 

Franklin,  Dr.,  proves  the  identity  of 
Lightning  and  Electricity,  336,  337; 
his  grave,  337. 

Frauenhofer's  Optical  Glass,  227. 

Frederick  the  Great  and  the  Automaton 
Chess-player,  87. 

Frencji,  Mr.,  his  Life  and  Times  of  Sam- 
uel Crompton,  302. 

"  Fulton  of  the  Orrery,"  Account  of,  172. 

Fulton,  Robert,  and  Steam  Navigation, 
391-393. 

GALK.V,  overthrow  of,  184. 


Green,  Charles,  his  Balloon  Ascents,  111. 

Guinand's  Glass  for  Telescopes,  225-229  ; 
his  Secret,  228. 

Gunpowder  and  the  Arabs,  46 ;  brought 
into  Europe,  45;  in  China,  44, 45;  first 
made  in  England,  47, 48;  improved  by 
Prince  Rupert,  148;  Manufacture  of, 
49;  Who  invented  it?  43. 

Gutenberg  invents  Printing,  81 ;  Statue 
of,  33. 


and  the  Electric  Telegraph,  455; 
brought  to  England,  452 ;  Malay  Inge- 
nuity, 453. 
Guzman's  Flying  Bird  and  Basket,  97. 

HALLAM  on  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  127.  128. 


Faraday  and  Davy,  Anecdote  of,  350;  on  Halley,  Dr.,  his  Apparatus  for  Walking 


under  Water,  69 ;  his  improved  Diving- 
bell,  66 ;  on  Living  under  Water,  and 
the  Diving-bell,  60,  65. 

Hampton's  Parachute  Descent,  116. 

Harrison,  John,  and  the  Longitude  Watch, 
175-179. 

Harvey,  Dr.  W. ,  and  the  Circulation  of 
the  Blood,  180-187. 

Helmholtz,  Prof.,  on  the  Air-gun,  57,  58; 
on  Automata,  82. 

Henri  II.  and  Palissy  the  Potter,  262,  266. 

Henson's  u  Aerial  Transit  Machine,"  116. 

Hero's  Steam  Apparatus  at  Alexandria, 
275. 

Herschel,  Sir  John,  on  the  Barometer,  50, 
52 ;  on  Paracelsus,  134. 

Herschel,  Sir  W.,  Account  of,  231;  As- 
tronomical Discoveries,  237;  discovers 
Uranus,  233;  his  Telescopes,  230,  233, 


Hiero's  Crown  and  Archimedes,  15,  16 ; 
his  Galley  described,  19,  20. 


470 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


Hooke,  Dr.,  his  Microscope,  248. 
Houdin,  his  Account  of  the  Automaton 

Chess-player,  90-92;  his  Automata 

84;    repairs    Vaucanson's  Automaton 

Duck,  76. 

Hudibras  and  Rupert's  Drops,  153. 
Hutton,  William,  his  Account  of  Lombe's 

Silk-mill,  323,  324. 

Hydrogen  Balloon,  first  Voyage  in,  103. 
Hydrogen  Gas  discovered,  98. 
Hydrostatics,  Wonders  of,  54. 

INDIAN  Muslin,  Manufacture  of,  317,  318. 
Italy,  Printing  in,  35. 

JACK  of  Hilton,  ^35olopile,  274. 
Jacquard,  ingratitude  to,  335;  his  Loom, 

332-335. 

James  H.  encourages  W.  Phipps,  63,  64. 
Jenner,  Dr.,  his  Character,  193,  194;  his 

Discovery    of   Vaccination,   188-194; 

Grants  to,  192;  Statue  of,  193,  194. 
Johnson,  Dr.  S.,  and  Gas-lighting,  357. 
Julien's  Balloon-fish,  119. 
Justinian  and  Silk  Culture,  319. 

KALEIDOSCOPE,  Sir  D.  Brewster's,  250- 
252. 

Kempelen,  De,  his  Automaton  Chess- 
player, 86-92;  his  Speaking  Automa- 
ton, 81. 

Kircher  and  the  Speaking-trumpet,  157, 
158. 

Kite,  Electric,  by  Franklin  and  De 
mas,  336-338. 

Klingert's  Water-armor,  70. 


"London  Black"  Dye,  321. 
London  first  lit  with  Gas,  357. 
82-  London  and  Oxford  compared,  122. 
Longitude  at  Sea,  Discovery  of,  179. 
Longitude  Watch,  the,  175-178. 
Loom  invented  by  Jacquard,  332-335. 
Louis  Philippe  ascends  in  a  Balloon,  104. 
Lowther,  Sir  J.,  and  Gas-lighting,  355. 
Lunardi,  first  Aeronaut  in  England,  106. 


LAMP,  Carcel's,  352,  353. 

Lamp,  Safety.     See  Davy. 

Lana's  Theoretic  Balloon,  96. 

Le  Roy,  the  French  Horologist,  172. 

Lee,  William,  and  the  Stocking-frame, 
328-331. 

Leibnitz's  Calculating  Machine,  206. 

Lens,  the  earliest,  246. 

Lenses  in  Diving-Bell?,  68. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  his  Discoveries,  127- 
131. 

Leuwenhoeck's  Microscopes,  248. 

Lever  to  move  the  World,  18. 

Leverrier  discovers  the  Planet  Neptune, 
257. 

Lights,  new  Artificial,  360. 

Light-house,  Eddystone,  built  by  Smea- 
ton,  367,  368. 

Lightning  Experiments  by  Dalibard  and 
Deloz,  and  Richman,  338,  339 ;  Frank- 
lin's, 336-838;  Rods,  Sir  W.  Snow 
Harris's,  339. 

Limbs,  Artificial,  by  Van  Petersen,  92. 

Lippersheys  and  the  Telescope,  213,  214. 

Living  under  Water,  59. 

Lombe,  John,  his  Journey  to  Piedmont, 
321;  his  Silk-mill,  319,  322-324;  Sir 
Thomas  Lombe's,  and  the  Silk  Manu- 
facture, 323,  324. 


MAELZEL'S  Musical  Automata,  79. 
Magic  Mirrors  and  Burning  Lenses,  253- 

255. 
Magnet,  Properties  of,  21 ;  Traditions  of 

the,  22,  23. 
Magnetic   Disturbances   of  the   Earth's 

Surface,  172 ;  Line  without  Variation, 

27;    Mountain,  22;    Needle,  the,  23; 

Wagon,  the,  24 
Maillardet's  Automata,  79. 
Man,  Model,  Expanding,  84,  85. 
Mariners'  Compass,  use  of  the,  24,  25. 
Mary  Rose  Vessel,  and  Diving-bell,  62. 
Merton  College,  Oxford,  an  early  home 

of  science,  122. 
Mezzotinto  Engraving  and  Prince  Rupert, 

146-147. 
Microscope,  Invention  of  the,  246-249; 

extended  use  of,  248. 
Microscopic  Examination  of  the  Blood, 

184,  185. 

Milton  and  Galileo,  216. 
Mirrors,  gigantic,  253. 
Ro-  Monck  Mason's  Archimedean  Screw  for 

Balloons,  116. 

Money,  Major,  the  Aeronaut,  108. 
Monge's  Copper  Balloon,  119. 
Montgolfiers,  the  Aeronauts,  99,  104. 
Montgolfier  Balloon  in  1838,  111. 
Moore's  Steam-carriage,  292. 
Morland,  Sir  Samuel,  his  Inventions,  156- 

160;  and  the  Steam-engine,  277. 
Mouret's  Account  of  the  Automaton  Chess- 
player, 90. 

Mudge's  Chronometers,  179. 
Mulberry  Garden,  St.  James's  Park,  327. 
Murdoch's  Gas-lighting,  356-358. 
Musical  Automata,  79. 
Muslins,  Indian,  317,  318. 

NAPIER'S  "Bones,"  or  "Rods,"  140,  204; 
Burning  Mirrors,  139;  his  meeting 
with  Henry  Briggs,  140;  Logarithms, 
140;  Machine  for  destroying  Turks, 
138;  Sailing  under  Water,  139;  Salt  Ma- 
nure, 139 ;  Secret  Inventions,  136-140. 

Nassau  Balloon,  Green's,  111. 
Nature  abhors  a  Vacuum,"  50. 

Navigation  of  the  Air,  95-120. 

Nautilus,  the  Submarine,  70. 

Neptune,  Planet,  discovered,  256-259. 

Slewcomen's  Atmospheric  Engine,  282. 

Newton  at  Cambridge,  219;  his  early 
amusements,  219;  makes  his  first  Tel- 
escope, 220-224;  Principia,  222-224, 
254;  Statue  of,  223, 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


471 


84. 


Nightingale,  Automaton,  by  Houdin,  S3,  Roebuck,  Dr.,  and  the  Steam-engine, 

28T. 

Rosse,  the  Earl  of,  his  Reflecting  Tele- 
scopes, 239,  245. 

Royal  George  wreck  surveyed  by  the 
Diving-bell,  69. 

Rupert's  Drops,  history  and  description 
of,  152-155;  his  inventions,  146-151. 

SADLEKS,  the  aeronauts,  104,  110. 
Safety-lamp.     See  Davy. 


OPTIC  Lenses  discovered  by  R.  Bacon, 

124. 
Orrery,  the,  invented,  172. 

PALISSY  the  Potter,  Story  of,  260-267 ;  in 
the  Bastile,  266;  his  religious  faith, 
266 ;  his  Ware,  origin  of,  262. 

Panharmonica,  by  Maelzel,  79. 


Papin's  Digester,  280;   his  Steam-engine  Safety-valve  invented  by  Papin,  280. 


improvements,  278. 
Paracelsus,  Story  of,  132-135 ;  his  original 

discoveries,  133. 
Parachute  descents,  115,  116. 
Parker's  Great  Burning  Lens,  254. 
Parsonstown,  Lord  Rosse's  Telescopes  at, 

239-242. 
Pascal's  Arithmetical  Machine,  204-206 ; 

the  Barometer,  51;   early  sagacity  of, 


52,  53;   Hydraulic  Press,  371;   weighs  Silk,  Consumption  of,  hi  England,  327; 


the  Atmosphere,  53,  54. 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  Statue  of,  315. 
Peels,  Rise  of  the,  313-316. 
Petin's  u  Aerial  Navigation,"  119. 
Pliipps,  William,   and   the  Diving-bell, 

63,  64 ;  and  the  Mulgrave  Family,  64. 
Photography,  432-441 ;  chromatype  and 

collodion,   438 ;    colored  images,  439  ; 

Daguerreotype,   the,   435-437;    Davy, 


Wedgwood,  and  Wollaston, 
of  the  art,  432;    Iodine,  439; 


germ 


and  Daguerre,   433-435 ;    Ritter    and 

Scheele,  432 ;  and  the  Stereoscope,  439 ; 

Talbot,  Fox,  and  Talbotypes,  436,  437; 

Young,  Dr.,  433. 

Playfair  on  Davy's  Safety -lamp,  348. 
Porta,  Baptista,  and  the  Telescope,  214. 
Portland  Vase,  Wedgwood's    copies    of, 

269,  270. 

Power-looms  introduced,  313. 
Prince's  Metal,  Invention  of,  148. 
Printing    Machine,    the,    40-43; 

American,  42;  Vertical,  42. 


Printing  from  Movable  Types,  30 ;  Press-  Spectacles,  Invention  of,  125. 


es,  ancient,  32,  37. 
Printing, Varieties  of,  29 ;  who  invented, 

and  where  ?  29. 
Prismatic   Spectrum 

Newton,  220. 


Savery,  Captain,  account  of,  279  ;  his 
Steam-engine,  278. 

Schoeffer,  Gutenberg,  and  Fust,  printers, 
32. 

Scheutz's  Difference  Engine,  209. 

Schwampan,  the,  in  China,  204. 

Schwartz  the  reputed  inventor  of  Gun- 
powder, 46. 

Shield  in  the  Thames  Tunnel  Works,  401. 


Culture  in  England,  327;   in  Greece 

and  Rome,  320. 

Silk  Stockings  in  England,  320,  321,  328. 
Silk-throwing    established    in  England, 

321. 

Silk  Throwsters  of  London,  321. 
Silkworm  in  China  and  Constantinople, 

319. 

Slough,  Sir  W.  Herschel  at,  237. 

3mall-pox,  ravages  of,  188,  189. 

Niepce  Smeaton  and  the  Empress  Catharine  of 


Russia,  264;  first  uses  the  Diving-bell 
in  civil  engineering,  69 ;  John,  Light- 
houses and  Harbors  by,  365-369. 

->oho  Works  at  Birmingham,  290-293. 

Somerset  House,  Telford  working  at,  373. 

Spain,  Printing  introduced  into,  35. 

Spalding  improves  Halley's  Diving-bell, 
68. 

Speaking  Machine,  American,  81 ;  the 
Euphonia,  82 ;  principle  of,  80. 

Speaking  Trumpet,  Morland's,  157,  158. 

Spectacle  Glasses  and  the  Telescope,  214. 


1  Qr/ENcn-FiBES,"  Sir  S.  Morland's,  158. 


RAGLAN  CASTLE  and  the  Marquis  of  Wor- 
cester, 161, 168. 

Reflecting  Telescope,  Lord  Rosse's  Great, 
241-244 

Regiomontanus,  fabulous  inventions  of, 
74,  95. 

Rennie,  John,  his  Breakwater  at  Plym- 
outh, 381 ;  Canals,  Docks,  and  Bridges, 
378-381 ;  improves  the  Diving-bell,  69  ; 
mill-works,  378,  379. 

Roberts  and  Hullin's  Heated-air  Balloon, 
107. 


Specula  for  Telescope?,  Grinding  and 
Polishing,  240. 

Spinning  and  Weaving,  antiquity  of,  316. 
the,  exhibited  by  Staffordshire  Potteries,  increase  of,  271. 

Stanhope  Printing-press,  39. 

Statues,  ancient  automatic,  72. 

Staunton,  Mr.,  his  account  of  the  Autom- 
aton Chess-player,  87. 


Steam-boat,  the  first  practical,  382-395; 
Allen  and  Dickens's,  384;  Bell's  CVrni- 
ef,  393;  Bramah's  propeller,  385;  Char- 
lotte Dundas,  388;  Chinese  paddle- 
wheel,  382 ;  Dawson,  in  Ireland,  394 ; 
Dodd,  George,  394;  France,  experi- 
ments in,  384;  Fulton,  Robert,  389, 
390 ;  Fulton's  Catamaran  and  Torpedo, 
393;  Genevois,  J.  H.,384;  Gravesend, 
Richmond,  and  Margate,  394;  Great 
Western  and  Great  Britain,  394; 
Horse-tow  vessel,  383;  Hulls,  Jona- 


472 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


than,  384 ;  Industry,  the  oldest  steam- 
er, 393;  Miller  and  Taylor's  experi- 
ments, 387 ;  Napoleon  I.  and  Fulton, 
390,391;  Ocean  Steamers,  394,  395; 
Paddle-wheel,  ancient,  382;  Papin's, 
383;  Ramsey's  paddle-wheels,  382; 
Savannah,  394;  Savery's,  383;  Sime, 
Mr.,  his  account  of  Fulton,  391;  Sym- 
ington's steam-boat  engine,  386 ;  Sym- 
ington's experiments,  386;  Syming- 
ton's fate,  390 ;  Wasborough,  Matthew, 
385;  Watt's  improved  engine,  384, 
385 ;  Sun  and  Planet  wheel,  385. 

Steam-carriage,  Cartwright's,  313. 

Steam-engine,  history  of  the;  ^Eolopile, 
274;  Arago,  on  Papin's  improvements, 
278 ;  Architonnere  of  Archimedes,  273 ; 
Beighton,  282;  Blasco  de  Garay,  275; 
Brancas,  276 ;  Busteric,  the  metal  god, 


Syracuse,  Siege  of,  17. 

TELESCOPE  Glass,  Improvements  in,  226 ; 
Telescope,  Hadley's  improved,  230; 
Invention  of  the,  212-218 ;  Newtonian, 
230,  231;  Reflecting,  Newton's  first, 
221;  Sir  W.  Herschel's,  233-236;  Lord 
Rosse's  described,  241-244. 

Telford,  Thomas,  and  the  Menai  Suspen- 
sion Bridge,  373-377 ;  Bridges  built  by, 
373 ;  a  Shepherd- boy,  373 ;  his  Statue 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  377. 

Teredo  navalis  and  Thames  Tunnel,  399. 

Terra  Cotta,  Wedgwood's,  271. 

Thames  Tunnel,  Account  of  the,  398-401. 

Thetis  Wreck,  and  temporary  Diving- 
bell,  70. 

Thornthwaite's  Apparatus  for  Walking 
under  Water,  70. 


275;    Hero  of  Alexandria,  275;    Mor- 


land,  Sir  S.,277;  Newcome'n,  281;  Pa-  Torricelli  and  the  Barometer,  50. 


D.,  277;  Pekin,  experiments  at, 
74';    Savery,  278;    Staffordshire  Jack 
of  Hilton,  274;  Watt,  James,  282-295; 


273 ;  Cornish  engines,  289 ;  De  Caus,  Tompion  and  Graham,  the  Watchmake 


grave  of,  173. 


Tower  of  London,  the  Marquis  of  Worces- 
ter confined  in,  163. 
Triewald's  improved  Diving-bell,  67. 


Worcester,  Marquis  of,  his  Hydraulic  Tripods,  ancient  automatic,  72. 
Machine,  276 ;  Zeno's  house  blown  up 
by  steam,  273. 
Steam  Gun,  anticipated,  131,  273. 


Warfare  by  Archimedes,  131;  British, 
295. 

Steering  Balloons  attempted,  108. 

Stephenson,  George,  the  Railway  En- 
gineer, 402-413;  birth  of,  402,  403; 


VACCINATION,  Dr.  Jenner's  Experiments 
in,  191. 


Steam-power,  ancient,  273 ;    applied  to  Van  Helmont  on  Flying,  95 ;  on  Speak- 


ing-machines,  80. 
Vaucanson,  Notice  of,  78 ;  his  Automaton 
Duck,  76 ;  Automaton  Flute-player,  76, 

Vauxhall  Gardens  and  Morland,  160. 


education  of,  404,  405;    Liverpool  and; Venice,  "Galileo's  Tube"  at,  214,  215. 
Manchester  Line,  409-411;  Locomotive,  Vivian's  Balloon  Observations,  112 


Darlington,  408,  409 ;  Locomotive,  im- 


Von  Siegen  invents  Mezzotinto  Engrav- 
ings, 147. 


proved,  410,  411 ;  Locomotive,  Killing- 
worth,  407;    Newcastle  Factory,  409; 
Rocket  Prize  Engine,  411-412;    Rail-  j  WALKING  under  Water,  69. 
way,  benefits  of,  402 ;  Railways,  origin  War  Instruments,  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
of,  406;    Railway  System,  407;    Rail-      130. 


ray  Works,  various,  413;  Speed  ridi- 


culed, 


Statues  of,  413. 


Stephenson,  Robert,  and  Railway  Works, 
414-425;  Battle  of  the  Gauges,  419; 
birth  and  education  of,  414-417 ;  Bogie, 
Planet,  and  Rocket  engines,  417,  418; 
Conway  and  Britannia  Bridges,  420; 
death  of,  424;  Funeral  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  424;  Institution  of  Civil  En- 
gineers, 423;  Kilsby  Tunnel,  418;  Lon- 
don and  Birmingham  Tunnel,  418; 
visits  South  America,  417;  Victoria 
and  High-level  Bridges,  419;  Victoria 
Bridge,  Canada,  422;  his  zeal  for  sci- 
ence, 423. 

Stereoscope  and  its  applications,  441-444 ; 
Brewster's  Lenticular  Stereoscope,  443  ; 
Euclid,  Galen,  and  Porta,  447;  Leo- 
nardo da  Vinci,  441 ;  Wheatstone,  Pro- 
fessor, 442. 

Stocking-frame,  Invention  of  the,  328. 

Stocking-weavers'  Hall,  Picture  in,  381. 

Submarine  Operations  at  Glasgow,  62. 


Watch,  Improvers  of  the,  170;  a  perfect 
one,  174 ;  the  smallest  Repeater,  178. 

Watches,  Graham's,  171. 

Water-armor,  by  Kessler,  64 

Water-clock,  Charlemagne's,  74. 

Watson,  Bishop,  on  Gas-lighting,  355. 

Watt,  James,  and  the  Steam-engine,  273- 
295;  Arithmetical  Machine,  293;  birth, 
282;  andBoulton,  287;  Copying-press, 
288;  Cornish  Engines,  289;  early  life, 
282-284 ;  and  Glasgow  University,  284, 
285;  Glasgow  Water- works,  293 ;  his 
great  Discovery,  285,  286 ;  in  London, 
284;  Newcomen's  Engine  Model,  285; 
Parallel  Motion,  289;  at  School,  283; 
Sculpture  Copying  -  machine,  293 ; 
Sketch  of  Watt  and  Boulton,  290; 
Soho  Steam-foundry,  291;  Steam-boat 
at  Rothsay,  292;  Steam-carriage,  292; 
Steam-engine  Improvements,  various, 
288,  289  ;  Steam-engine  Patents,  290- 
292 ;  Steam  Navigation,  291 ;  Sun  and 
Planet  Wheels,  289 ;  Tilt-hammer,  289 ; 


GENERAL    INDEX. 


473 


Tributes  by  Arago,  Arnott,  Brougham, 

Jeffrey,    and    Wordsworth,    293-295; 

Uniform  Weights  and  Measures,  289  ; 

Westminster  Abbey,  Statue  in,  294. 
Wedgwood,  Josiah,  and  his  Wares,  268- 

2T2;  his  "Queen's  Ware,"  269. 
Westminster  Almonry,  Caxton's  Press, 

Wheatstone,    Professor,   and    Speaking- 
machine,  81. 
Whitby,  Mrs.,  her  Silk  Culture,  327. 


Wilkins,  Bishop,  on  Flying,  Cl ;  on  Speak- 
ing-machines, 80. 

Willis's  Speaking-machine,  80. 

Windsor  Castle,  Prince  Rupert  in,  151. 

Winsor,  his  Gas-lighting,  358. 

Worcester,  the  Marquis  of,  his  Centtn-ji 
of  Inventions,  161-169;  his  Hydraulic 
machine,  276 ;  Steam-engine,  167, 168. 

ZAMBECCAKI,  Count,  Aeronaut,  104,  105. 


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